İran’da EFL Derslerinin Sözlü İletişimi ve Beceri ve Motivasyon Stratejilerine Yönelik Bir Araştırma

İran’da İngilizce öğrenme tutkusu artmaktadır. İran’da resmi rakamlar yaklaşık 8 milyon öğrencinin ortaokul, lise, üniversite ve özel dil eğitim kurumlarında ikinci bir dil olarak İngilizce öğrenmekte olduğunu göstermektedir. İran’da 14 yaşından sonra İngilizce öğrenimi zorunludur ve öğrenciler orta öğrenim düzeyinden 18 yaşında kadar İngilizce öğrenimine devam etmektedirler. 7 yıllık İngilizce öğretiminden sonra öğrencilerin İngilizce konuşma becerilerinin çok sınırlıkalmasıdikkat çekicidir.Bu makalenin konusu İran’daki EFL orta öğretim öğrencileri arasında üç yıllık İngilizce öğrenimleri esnasında, sekizinci yıl odaklıolmak üzere, motivasyonla ilgili tavsiyeler konusundaki bir araştırmadır. Bu makalenin amacı, Orta öğrenimdeki 3 yıllık İngilizce dersinde hedef dilde konuşmak ve iletişim kurmak olarak düşünülen sözlü iletişim becerilerinin önündeki engelleri araştırma ve İran’daki yabancıdil sınıflarında iletişimde karşılaşılan farklımotivasyon engellerini içeren bir literatür incelemesi sunmaktır. Ayrıca, İran’daki yabancıdil sınıflarında uygun motivasyon stratejilerini ortaya koymaktır. Daha sonra İran’da İngilizce öğretiminin arka planına ışık tutulacak ve İran’da İngilizce öğretiminin sorunlarınıdeğerlendirdikten sonra, bazıpratik öneriler sunulacaktır. Yukarıdaki konularıgöz önüne alarak bu araştırmada görüşme ve anket olmak üzere iki yöntem kullanıldıve hem öğrenciler hem de öğretmenlerden en güvenilir ve doğru dönütleri almak için 7 farklıokuldan 111 öğrenci ile çalışıldı. İran eğitim ortamında en güvenilir ve doğru sonuçların alınmasınıiçin bu iki yöntemin kullanılmasıuygun görüldü. Bu yolla, orta öğrenim esnasında öğrencilerin motivasyonunun mu azaldığınıyoksa yöntemlerin mi öğrencilerin ihtiyaçlarınıkarşılamadığınıgörmek istedik. Araştırmanın amaçlarına uygun olarak, bu araştırmada bilgi ve eylem için iki önemli entelektüel proje türü uygulandıve aşağıdaki iki araştırma sorusuna cevap arandı: 1 İranlıöğrencileri yabancıbir dil olarak İngilizce konuşmaya ne motive etmektedir? 2 İran’daki sınıf ortamıiçin uygun motivasyon stratejileri nelerdir? Bu araştırma, İranlıöğrencilerin anadil konuşan öğretmenlerden yararlanamadığıve ana dili konuşmayan öğretmenlerinin konuşmanın önemi üzerinde yeteri kadar durmadıklarısonucunu ortaya koymuştur. Bu sonuç, Orta Doğu ülkelerinde benzeri yeni araştırmalar yapılmasınıgerekli hale getirmektedir.

The last few decades have seen a revolution in the world of communication, and specifically over the last ten years a huge demand among countries to interact and communicate in many different fields such as export and import goods, political discussions, education, management, bank transactions, negotiations and many others. This rapid increase in communication between the countries of the World led them to progress their ability to communicate in English as the International Language Holliday, 2005:1 . Unfortunately this crucial ability seems to be being neglected in the Iranian Educational System. Learning English from the age of 14 is a compulsory course in Iran and students will continue the English course until the age of 18 at Secondary level. Surprisingly, after 7 years studying English their ability to make small conversation in English is shaky Jahangard, 2007:30 . This article is concerned with an investigation into motivational recommendations among Iranian EFL students during their three year English Language studies, with the focus on year 8. The aim of this article is to explore the obstacles of oral communication skills which would be considered to be speaking and interacting in the target language among learners in their 3 year English course in Secondary school. Not being able to communicate in English after studying for nearly 3 years at the Secondary level, students are still struggling to apply English in their daily conversations. A review of literature will be addressed in the subsequent sections, which reveals a clear definition of different types of motivation and also the obstacles in communication in foreign language classrooms in Iran. Additionally, the advantages and disadvantages of research models and their definitions are presented. To evaluate the quality, validity and reliability of the research I am going to collect central criteria from a number of standardizations. Ethical issues are used to guide the research and at the end of this article I will provide further implications to this research project. Considering the above issues, two methods were used in this survey, which were interviews and questionnaires. From my experience, applying these two methods in the Iranian education environment would have the most reliable and accurate results. Additionally by employing these two methods I can explore the results and investigation in more detail. In view of the context of the survey, I wish to emphasis the research aims in the following paragraphs. This research is aimed at revealing the appropriate motivational strategies in Iranian foreign language classrooms. In this way, I wished to see whether learners become less motivated during secondary school or whether the methods do not meet the learners’ needs. In view of the research aims, two significant types of intellectual project were applied in this research: knowledge for understanding and knowledge for action Poulson and Wallace, 2003:23 . Elaborating on the research aims, two research questions were suggested as follows: 1 What motivates Iranian students to speak English as a foreign language? 2 What are the appropriate motivational strategies for the Iranian classroom environment? These research questions were established for two reasons. The first research question focuses on the motivational skills to persuade Iranian learners to speak and to interact more in English as their second language and the second question focuses on the most suitable ways to teach within Iranian classrooms. In the view of the above research questions, it is clear that Iranian learners are always struggling with oral skills, in and out of the school environment. To investigate the main reasons for this lack of motivation among students I am going to focus on 111 students from 7 different schools in order to achieve the most reliable and accurate feedback from both learners and teachers. Moreover, learners are not only responsible for not being able to communicate in English after these years; the teachers and the design syllabus are also having an effect. According to the survey results, speaking is not appreciated by teachers in Iranian classrooms compared to the reading, writing and listening skills. This tragedy is also caused by not having native speakers in Iranian schools. Which, this catastrophe is affecting the learners’ oral skills more than the other skills, and also, the course time is not sufficient to improve the students’ speaking skills. In the light of all these points, I wish to investigate the lack of communication among Iranian students. The fact that Iranian students are not able to benefit from native speakers and their non-native teachers are not focusing on the values of speaking in this modern society, led this survey to a new investigation in Middle Eastern countries. This survey researched an area that has rarely been explored; therefore I hope this investigation can introduce a real view of Iranian foreign language classrooms. In Iran, the fever for learning English is rising. Official figures state that about 8 million learners are currently learning English as a foreign language at junior and high schools, universities, and private language institutes Roshd FLT, 2008:15 . However, despite this growth, there is little literature on the practical aspects of these classes available. In the Literature review section of this dissertation I am going to throw light on the problems and a brief background of teaching English in Iran, starting with a summary of some key notions about the current discipline in Iranian schools, according to Iranian and international teachers and authors. After evaluating the problems of English teaching in Iran, some practical suggestions are presented for improvements. Learning and being able to communicate in English as a second language ESL is increasing rapidly in Iran. Generally, the instruction is structural and the pedagogical focus is, consequently, on the grammatical features of English. As Norozi Khiyabani believes, structural and grammar-translation methods of teaching are most common, and change is resisted. By applying the Grammar Translation Method, the best results will be achieved in the written exams where learners are able to spend more time answering the questions by referring to their grammatical knowledge which roles have been emphasized by their teachers Krashen & Terrell, 1983:130 .