برتری در مکالمات زبان آموزان سطح پیشرفته انگلیسی در گروههای هم جنس و غیر هم جنس در ایران

according to coates’s (2004, as cited in zhang, 2010) definition of "conversational dominance" (p.111), it refers to the phenomenon of a speaker dominating others in interaction. specifically, it means how a speaker makes use of certain strategies to get the floor and maintain the floor. thus, the amount of talk is the main measurement for the dominance of the conversation. whether a speaker dominates the conversation or not would be measured by the number of turns taken and the length of turns. the purpose of this study is to find out if there are any inequalities or differences in the conversational dominance for female students and male students, in terms of total spoken words, number of the turn-taking and the number of interruptions. based on these results, generally it can be argued that in the mixed gender conversations studied in this research, females were slightly more dominant than males and this conclusion is in contrary with the common belief that mostly male interlocutors can exert more dominance over women. in addition, it can be concluded that there is a clear relationship among the learners’ number of spoken words, total turn takings and interruptions in mixed and same groups. after getting the data from all of the classes in this research and having them together on the linear chart, a pattern was created which showed that the gender of the people talking to does not change the way one talks. if a male or female learner talks less or interrupts less in the same group with the people from his or her own sex, s/he will speak or interrupt less in the mixed group, too. and vice versa, if a person tries to take the floor in the same group, he will act the same in mixed group, too. so, the result of this study shows that the gender of the audience will not affect the speech; if there are any differences, they are caused by some other factors. the outcomes of this study suggest that the experience of engaging in interactions with other learners may be a different experience for males and females, and that learners interactions may not differ depending only on whether their interlocutor is of the same or different gender and whether any of the partners with the same or opposite gender dominate the conversation or not. it can also differ by various other factors that create a “hierarchical position within a group”( mast, 2002) and thus affect a person’s self-confidence. that is to say if there exists dominance in a group, it is not necessarily the result of being a man or woman, but of being powerless.( o’bar and atkins, 1980). generally, efl instructors want to give their students the best possible opportunities to learn and use the target language. given the findings that dominance may influence learners experiences in conversational interactions; teachers may try to get more information on learners’ social status, social roles, job, education, their relations with each other and the place they are from. they may also wish to encourage their students to work with interlocutors of a special gender or mixed-gender groups and may get them to be in a group with interlocutors of the same status. teachers can make an attempt to minimize the effect of these factors by highlighting each learner’s knowledge and strong points, so that none of the learners will feel powerless in a discussion. efl instructors should consider planning for times when learners take part in discussion sessions, in order to allow them the best possible context for the learning and communication opportunities. usually, in conversations mostly dominated by any of the genders or by learners which are considered to have a higher social status, other learners may not be able to express their ideas easily. teachers should create “equal access to learning resources”, so that none of the students even with lower social status are “educationally disadvantaged” (holmes, 1995). so it is one of the most substantial responsibilities of efl teachers to be more conscious of differentiated patterns of language use, leading to more neutral teaching. access to appropriate talking opportunities for all learners can be carefully controlled by efl instructors. on the other hand, as the results of the study indicated that the gender of a learner’s interlocutor affects the speech to a little extent, the gender of efl teachers can be very effective during the classroom interactions; in this study it was attempted to have homogeneous classes and all of the participants were students, this cannot clearly reflect the way learners take part in conversations with their teachers. it seems that when the gender of teachers is the same as students, they can talk easily and freely and express their own ideas more clearly but when teacher and students are of different genders they may feel embarrassed during conversations and may not be able to express their opinions especially on specific topics which are more gender oriented. the atmosphere in efl classes should be created the way each learner considers and accepts the teacher as just instructors not a person from a different society who may cause an embarrassing situation for the students. in addition, it can be stated that learners differ psychologically in the way they act, from the style in which they communicate to the way in which they attempt to influence others. these differences in communication and influence tactics also have implications for gender differences across behaviors and personality types of learners that is effective in learning a foreign language