risk taking

Research findings have shown that classroom interaction is so important and hels learners to develop necessary skills like exploring knowledge and developing critical thinking skills. Complicated nature of classroom interaction can have different forms, such as teacher-student, student- student and in every classroom setting, different kinds of interactional behavior can be observed. Learners may participate eagerly or stay silent most of the time. Most teachers may encourage students to speak up in class some other may consider oral participation not to be so important for students academic achievement and do not attempt to get their students participate in class.

One possible reason for students’ silence in class is that most of the students learn English as an academic subject or just to fulfill in an entrance examination. Ellis (1985) argued the issues related to foreign language acquisition: learner language, external factors, and classroom second language acquisition.

One other potential reason can be that students learning and academic success is not always related to their classroom participation and interaction. They get good good grades without participating in classroom. However if the knowledge gained cannot be used in solving a problem or learner cannot use it in real life situation then then meaningful learning does not take place. As a result grades can not be used as a reliable source for measuring learners achievement.

Research findings show that asking question, offering comments and any kind of class participation have beneficial effects and increases students’ critical thinking skills. As Allwrit(1984) that considers classroom interaction as fundamental fact of classroom pedagogy, since every thing and ever...

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...taking behavior is influenced by external factors such as their cultural beliefs or practices, their learning situation such as: teachers' attitude, teaching style and other course related factors like class size and classroom activities.

1.3. Purpose of the study

The aim of this study is to find and analyze the risk taking behavior of the language learners. In this study I will review the previous studies that investigated risk taking behavior of the learners of English in order to identify common factors that inhabit students risk taking. We aim to find answer to current research questions:

1. What are the factors that inhibit Turkish students to take risk in EFL classroom?

2. The extent to which student with high risk taking ability differ from students with low risk taking ability in terms of the factors they find inhibiting them from taking risks?

3.