Silent Listeners: Investigating Iranian EFL Learners’ Awareness and Use of Backchanneling in English Conversation

Native speakers use various brief verbal or nonverbal responses to signal attention, understanding, and involvement in spoken interactions. Known as “backchanneling”, such responses are conspicuously absent in English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners’ conversations even though they are crucial in maintaining conversational coherence and rapport. This study looks into Iranian EFL learners’ awareness of backchanneling and the extent to which they employ such signals in English conversation. Twenty-seven undergraduate English major students participated in two audio-recorded peer discussions separated by a backchannelling-focused consciousness raising (CR) task. The conversation analysis performed on the collected data revealed that learners began to use backchannelling devices more frequently in the post-consciousness raising peer discussions. The findings suggest that most – even highly advanced – EFL learners lack awareness of interactional features present in native speaker conversations and that pedagogical intervention in the form of explicit instruction and modeling of backchanneling is needed to improve learners’ interactional and pragmatic competence. In the end, some pedagogical implications are discussed in relation to communicative classroom practices that can promote active listening and more natural conversational engagement.

کلیدواژه ها:

Backchanneling ، EFL Learners ، Interactional Competence ، Iranian Context ، Spoken Communication