Licenciatura en Educación Básica con Énfasis en Humanidades-Inglés · 2026

Teachers’ attitudes towards students’ oral participation in the english classroom

This qualitative case study investigates how two EFL teachers' attitudes, as expressed through language use and body language, influence eleventh-grade students' oral participation in a public Colombian school, using Amidon and Hunter's (1966) Verbal Interaction Category System (VICS) to triangulate across non-participant observations, semi-structured interviews, and researcher journals. The findings suggest that VICS Categories 2 (Praises/Encourages) and 4 (Asks Questions) are major drivers: Teacher B's effusive, gesturally enriched praise and humorous questioning encourage self-corrections, choral replies, and long-term involvement, lowering anxiety, whereas Teacher A's formal validations and persistent probes result in compliant but limited participation, hampered by frustration signals. Categories 5 (Gives Information) and 8 (Student Responses) emphasize bilingual scaffolding's function in co-constructing interaction. Despite methodological limits such as limited observations, these patterns confirm teachers’ roles as relational bridges to EFL fluency, with implications for motivated pedagogy in beginner-level contexts.