Secondary School Teachers’ Use of Communication Accommodation Strategies to Enhance Teacher-Student Interaction in EFL Classroom

Abstract

The present study was designed to examine the types of communication accommodation strategies employed by secondary school teachers when interacting with their students in English as a foreign language classroom. In particular, the study investigates the teachers’ perceptions of classroom interaction and the common types of communication accommodation strategies those teachers use to avoid breakdowns in communication with their students. Accordingly, the study seeks to answer the following research questions: What are the secondary school teachers’ perceptions of classroom interaction and what are the communication accommodation strategies used by secondary school teachers. To this end, the study opted for a quantitative and qualitative design to collect data. A questionnaire was administered to twenty English teachers from different secondary schools in the Wilaya of Jijel. Likewise, a semi-structured interview was conducted with two from those who responded to the questionnaire. The analysis of the research findings consistently confirmed that secondary school teachers used communication accommodation strategies such as approximation, interpretability, discourse management, emotional expression, and interpersonal control strategies while interacting with students. Notably, discourse management, interpretability, and approximation strategies are singled out as important communication accommodation strategies used by secondary school teachers in EFL classroom.