Student Reticence in Iran's Academia: Exploring Students’ Perceptions of Causes and Consequences

The nature of silence in classroom is complex with different students possessing distinct beliefs, social norms, and cultural backgrounds. There are several factors that contribute to students’ reluctance to speak up and participate in classroom activities, such as linguistic, psychological, and sociocultural (Harumi, 2010, ) issues. Awareness of sources of silence on the part of EFL instructors may decrease misinterpretations regarding students’ level of engagement in language classrooms. Despite the available literature on Asian students’ silence (e.g., Littlewood, 2000), studies in the context of Iran are scarce and have mainly focused on exploring teachers’ perspectives in this regard. To help bridge this gap, we interviewed 28 university EFL students exploring their perceptions of the nature of reticence in classroom, its causes, and its consequences. Thematic analysis of the data yielded mixed results. Regarding its causes, silence might be because of students’ personality type and even a legitimate form of classroom participation. In some other cases, it seems to be the result of teachers’ emotionally negative feedback to questions and mistakes or, at a more general level, their authoritarian approach to students. In terms of its outcomes, student reticence was found to sometimes contribute to and sometimes hinder deeper mental engagement in classroom process. Based on the findings, some guidelines were proposed for instructors on how to deal with reticent learners.