EFL Students' Attitudes towards Negative Effects of Large Class at Kandahar University

The effects of class size on teaching and learning in EFL classrooms have been through an argumentative debate among researchers for a long time. Some scholars, researchers, and teachers claim that large classes result in negative effects while others see large classes as opportunities. Hence, the main aim of this paper is to explore the attitudes of students regarding the negative effects of large classes on EFL learning at Kandahar University in Afghanistan. This research is a quantitative study, which applied the survey design. The questionnaire of the study was adapted from Donkoh and Antwi (۲۰۱۵). The researchers distributed ۱۵۰ questionnaires to freshman, sophomore, junior and senior students in the Department of English Language and Literature, and collected back ۱۳۰ questionnaires properly filled in. The study found that in the instructional domain, practical works, exercises, and communicative activities were seriously missing and the teachers were dedicating most of the class time to classroom management and attendance; in the psychological domain, students were passive and felt neglected; in the social domain, there was an emotional gap between teacher and students. Lastly, the findings of the research are in line with the studies carried out in the EFL context in other countries. Moreover, the study presents some implications and recommendations to cope with the problems of large classes for future application in teaching EFL students.

Keywords:

Class size , EFL Classroom , Overcrowded Classrooms , Teaching English in Large Classes