Mercy Mah Iwuyum
Abstract
Teaching English as a Foreign Language successfully requires an interaction between the teacher and learners in the target language but that was lacking in my classroom. This paper investigates strategies that I can use to get my students to interact with me in English, ways in which students can develop appropriate vocabulary they need to interact and methods which I can support shy students to use English in class. Through a qualitative design made up of teacher’s journals, interviews, group discussions, and observation, some useful details provided by the students enabled us to design action steps that are gradually developing new classroom atmospheres. Students identified the lack of encouragements when they make efforts, the absence of revision on their part, and the lack of vocabulary to express themselves. With such information, strategies like constant motivation, group exercises and the use of topics of interest were put in place. These have significantly changed classroom interactions, as students now make efforts to construct simple sentences in English and they also have the support of their peers when in difficulty. This research is helpful for the community of practitioners to understand the importance of considering learners’ needs in the teaching-learning process.
Keywords
interaction; motivation; learners’ needs
How to cite (APA)
Iwuyum, M. M. (2025). Investigating students’ inability to speak in English in the classroom. ELT Classroom Research Journal, 2(2), 49–63.
https://doi.org/10.23350/eltcrj.224
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