What enhances EFL students’ participation in lecture discourse? Student, lecturer and discourse perspectives

Lecture discourse has been conventionally known to be of a monological nature. However, lectures are more highly regarded if they allow for reciprocal discourse, especially for students of other languages who need help in understanding the content and in appropriating the language. In this paper, we will attempt a qualitative analysis of the interactive lecture discourse used by three lecturers and their non-native English speaking students of the English Studies Degree at the University of Alicante. The study includes a student survey, and a questionnaire given to lecturers to help us determine what are some of the conditions that will promote interaction between lecturers and students, as well as a summary of the beliefs of lecturers who habitually carry out interactive lectures. In combining the results of the diverse methodologies used, it was found that the presence of overt participation does not only depend on the participants’ awareness of the conditions that may promote it, but also on an educational system that compensates lecturers for their effectiveness and rewards students for their participation.