Reticence of speaking in a Maldivian ESL classroom : causes and solution / Suhana Abdul Shakoor

Abstract

Although teachers adopt various approaches in their teaching to improve the language skills of the students, reticent behaviour of the students in speaking lesson often frustrates teachers. Hence, the present study aims to investigate the factors contributing to the reticent behaviour of students in ESL classrooms, strategies used by Maldivian students to cope with speaking anxiety and how teachers attempt to alleviate the problem of reticence in ESL classroom. To fulfill this aim, the present paper addresses the following questions: (1) what do Maldivian students and teachers notice as the factor contributing the reticence in speaking in ESL classroom? (2) What strategies do Maldivian learners use to cope with speaking anxiety? (3) What strategies do Maldivian teachers adopt to effectively cope with student's reticent behaviour of speaking in ESL class? The data was taken from seven participants; four teachers and three students through face-to-face interview. Further, classroom observations were done to gain more information about the behaviour being studied. The research findings showed that different social psychological factors, fluency factors and cognitive factors make the leaner to be reticent in ESL classroom. Furthermore, students employ various strategies, such as avoidance strategy, seeking help from friends, using mother tongue, writing and rehearsing what they want to say in order to cope with the problem reticence. The findings also showed that teachers attempt to alleviate the problem by altering the teaching methods and building a stress free classroom environment for the students. Surprisingly, the research showed that teachers give less importance to speaking skill as it is not tested in exam. Therefore, it is recommended to include speaking in when the Maldivian students do IGCSE exam.

Key words: Reticence, speaking anxiety, linguistic competence, communicative competence, oral proficiency,