A study of the occurrence and initiation of verbal interaction in EFL online classes at university level

Abstract EN

Foreign language classes are usually activated by means of a variety of strategies and techniques that both teachers and students bring in or contribute to so as to bring about more effective learning and create more involvement in the ongoing activities.

interaction, through its multi-directional forms, plays a focal role in triggering students’ interest and motivates them to participate in the learning process.

verbal interaction refers to teachers addressing of students or vice versa or students addressing each other.

it has a long history as a topic of study and research in the traditional educational system represented by teacher-student meeting face to face within a classroom setting.

interaction in online classes has been recently heeded due to the outbreak of COVID-19 which made almost all the educational institutions worldwide shut down and change to online classes.

as such, the current research aims at studying and investigating verbal interaction in English as a foreign language classes at university level in terms of its occurrence and initiation, i.e.

the party, i.e.

teacher or students, who starts verbal interaction.

the study hypothesizes that (1) in EFL online classes, verbal interaction does not occur as required and (2) verbal interaction in EFL online classes is mostly teacher initiated.

to validate the preceding hypotheses and bring about the set aims, 90 online sessions (45 linguistics and 45 literature with a minimum duration of 40-45 minutes of each session, were attended and observed by the researchers.

the data were collected by means of a checklist prepared by the researcher.

on analyzing the collected data, it was found out that verbal interaction takes place with a reasonable frequency in online classes, linguistics and literature, and that they were mostly initiated by the teacher.

in the light of these findings, it has been recommended that due to the educational and pedagogical importance of verbal interaction, teachers should try their best to increase the frequency of verbal interaction occurrence and encourage students to initiate it as a means of more involvement in the ongoing learning activities.