Exploring EFL Teachers’ Socioaffective and Pedagogic Strategies and Students’ Willingness to Communicate with a Focus on Iranian Culture

Abstract

One of the most important factors related to learners’ willingness to communicate (WTC) is teachers’ use of socioaffective and pedagogic strategies, which are tightly related to cultural context of education. The present qualitative study, using focus group interview, investigated 19 EFL (English as a foreign language) teachers’ perspectives about their socioaffective and pedagogic strategy use in intermediate classes, with a focus on Iranian culture, as an effort to understand to what extent these strategies are facilitating or debilitating of students’ WTC. Using Creswell’s six steps of inductive analysis, two main themes of facilitating and hindering factors emerged. The findings are suggestive in terms of contribution of several cultural and social factors related to the interaction between EFL teachers and students and its relation to WTC. It also discusses the implications of the study for EFL teachers.