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چکیده
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The aim of the present study was to investigate silence in classrooms of Iranian EFL learners to compare the relation between silence with language proficiency and silence with gender of students in the Department of English Language and Literature at Arak University. The number of participants was 76 that included 47 female and 29 male students. And they were B.A students in English language translation and English literature. At first, the Oxford Placement Test (OPT) was administered to establish the students' language level and for their homogenization. Then; all the students that took part in the OPT test after one week participated in Pranasti's questionnaire (2013). Based on the questionnaire that was used, all the students were divided into three groups, the first group was a listener, the second group was the speaker, and the third group was both listener and speaker. To camper students' language proficiency and their silence in class, a one-way ANOVA was employed to answer to the first hypothesis; silence in the classroom is always a sign of non-proficiency in Language. Then; for answering to the second null hypothesis used chi-square (crosstabs) and indicated there is not any significant relationship between students’ gender and their silence. Finally, the results showed that necessarily lack of language proficiency and a particular gender is not the main reasons for silence. Therefore; unlike the first hypothesis the second hypothesis was supported. In addition; by a qualitative analysis, the causes for students' silence were discussed, and three factors such as fear of losing face, fear of making a mistake, and teacher's methodology were discussed. Thus; the results of the present Study confirmed and rejected some meaning of silence in the classroom. That means; silence can have particular implications in different persons and different situations but, in this research, lack of language proficiency and a specific gender (being male or female) were not ca
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