Tapping on High School Students' Conception of English Conversation

Abstract

This study explored the conceptions and experience of a group of senior high school students in Taiwan toward English conversation. The results indicated that these high school students mostly upheld impersonal, instrumental type of motivation, were engaged more frequently in non-social, transactional talk situated as much in EFL as in ESL environment, were often deterred from and possibly interfered in their engagement in English conversation by various mental hurdles and psychological noises, and heeded and were equipped with primarily grammatical competence but overlooked and lacked the discourse and strategic competence as two other indispensable components of English conversational competence. Four important pedagogical implications were then drawn to better motivate and prepare learners of this particular age group to take part in English conversation.