چکیده:
A growing body of research has indicated that students of ESL/EFL are reticent and unwilling to be engaged in oral activities in English lessons. Communicative language ability includes speaking ability, so vocabulary knowledge plays an integral role in speaking a language. However, there have been few studies examining the degree to which vocabulary knowledge affects speaking ability. The present study aimed to explore the degree of reticence in Iranian EFL learners and to find out the roles that productive vocabulary knowledge and gender may play in their reticence. To accomplish this, 56 male and female English language learners participated in the study. Unwillingness-to-Communicate Scale and Vocabulary-Size Test of Controlled Productive Ability were used. To analyze the data, descriptive statistics, Pearson Product-moment Correlation and an independent t-test were used. Results of the study revealed a relatively low level of reticence among Iranian EFL learners. However, it seems that learners mostly avoid communication rather than have a negative attitude toward class participation. In addition, it was found that the learners’ vocabulary knowledge had a significant relationship with their reticence; while, no significant difference was found between Iranian male and female learners in terms of reticence.
خلاصه ماشینی:
The present study aimed to explore the degree of reticence in Iranian EFL learners and to find out the roles that productive vocabulary knowledge and gender may play in their reticence.
Among the reasons for reticence, the important role of vocabulary knowledge in speaking and communicating in SL/FL classroom is not deniable.
If these assumptions about the importance of vocabulary knowledge in communication are true, it raises the question of how this factor might influence language learners’ willingness or unwillingness to speak the target language in classroom.
Hence, this paper mainly aims to investigate the level of reticence among Iranian EFL learners and to explore the possible impacts gender and productive vocabulary knowledge may have on learners’ tendency toward classroom oral participation.
Instruments The instruments employed in this study to collect the data included: (1) The Unwillingness-to-Communicate Scale (Burgoon, 1976) and (2) Vocabulary- Size Test of Controlled Productive Ability (Laufer & Nation, 1999).
As it was stated before, most research studies reported that learners’ reticence level are high especially in the case of Asian EFL learners who are passive in language classrooms and prefer not to use target language most of the time (Jackson, 2002, 2003; Zou, 2004).
A Pearson product-moment correlation and a test of significance for Pearson r were employed to verify the relationship between the learners’ reticence in speaking and their vocabulary knowledge.
The findings proved that there is a significant though negative correlation between the learners’ reticence in classroom discussion and their vocabulary knowledge (Figure 1).