An investigation of the factors affecting students' low oral participation in EFL classrooms

Oral participation and reasons that affect low oral participation in a classroom have been of interest in the language education field. Factors might be changing from context to context, and despite the well-known importance of oral participation in EFL classrooms, there is minimal information on the Turkish classroom setting especially at high school levels. This case study brings a new perspective on reasons for low oral participation by adopting qualitative research design; contributing to the field with researchers mostly adopting quantitative research design in addition to considering external reasons, with the help of speaking activities in a course book. Based on interviews and video-based observation of 8 students, and 38 students in numbers of task choice, this study aims to investigate what factors are causing the low oral participation of students in the Turkish EFL classroom setting and the effect of task types on oral participation with the help of content analysis. The insights gained from this study will assist other students in increasing their oral participation in EFL classrooms and gain a new perspective for educators about creating their context to have fully active and orally participating classes. Keywords: low oral participation, EFL classrooms, importance of oral participation, students' perceptions