Volume 5. December 2009. | December home |

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Title
Examining the Relationship between Iranian Non-native English Teachers' Use of Communication Strategies and Context Types within Iranian EFL Classrooms

 Authors
Baqer Yaqubi (Ph.D.)
Mazandaran University

Vahid Rahmani Doqaruni (M.A.)
Mazandaran University

 Bio Data
Baqer Yaqubi is assistant professor in TEFL, teaching in the English Department of Mazandaran University, Iran. His main research interests are: Discourse analysis and sociolinguistics.

Vahid Rahmani Doqaruni is an M.A. student in TEFL at Mazandaran University. His major research interests are: Second language acquisition and discourse analysis.
                                                 

Abstract
This article reports on an empirical investigation of the Iranian non-native English teachers' use of communication strategies in Iranian EFL contexts. It particularly aims at a) identifying the specific interactional contexts in Iranian EFL classrooms in which communication strategies occur, and b) examining the extent to which teachers' use of different communication strategy types is related to the immediate types of context in which these communication strategies occur. The database is drawn from transcripts of audio-recordings of 15 lessons from five teachers (three lessons from each teacher) totaling 27 hours of naturally occurring data and including 262 communication strategies. Three different context types were identified and findings indicated that although there was not a statistically significant relationship between communication strategy types and context types, some interesting patterns occurred in the data. In addition, it was found that approximation is the most frequently used type of communication strategy among Iranian teachers and they prefer to use this type of communication strategy more than any other type of communication strategy in all context types.

Key Terms: Communication strategies, EFL contexts, Iranian teachers, Approximation.