Investigating the Effect of Bilingualism and Social Class on Class Participation of Iranian EFL Learners

This study investigated the effect of bilingualism and social class on class participation of Iranian EFL learners. For independent variable of social class, students were distinguished into three groups of low, middle, and high class, and with respect to language variable participants were either bilingual or monolingual. Population of this study was monolingual and bilingual students of both IAU South Tehran Branch and Allameh Tabatabaei Universities. 120 students were selected as samples that after data collection 90 questionnaires were qualified for analysis. This research was an applied study that measured the level of classroom participation using (Zheng, 2008) questionnaire. The validity and reliability of the study were achieved using Chrobach's Alpha (95%) and experts’ ideas. Data were analyzed using SPSS 20 software. Result showed that there is no significant difference between language groups and classroom participation. Otherwise, there was a significant difference between social status and classroom participation. Therefore, there was a significant relationship between language and social class with respect to classroom participation. At first, monolinguals and high class students had higher classroom participation (mean=3.9333), then bilingual and high school students (3.6000) had higher levels of classroom participation.