Iranian EFL learner’s communication strategies: Emails to instructors

Abstract

Email has become a widespread medium of communication between students and their instructors, however; there is a limited amount of research on instructional role and uses of email in academic context. The present study investigated the communication strategies in email messages sent by Iranian EFL students to their male instructors in relation to their socioeconomic status (such as family income and education level). Moreover, the relationships between communication strategies and gender were examined. Email message sent by male and female students to their male instructors during the academic year 2012-2013 were analyzed for communication strategies (requesting, negotiating, reporting, social). The results of quantitative and qualitative statistics revealed that there were significant relationships between communication strategies and participants’ socioeconomic status. In addition, there were significant relationships between communication strategies and gender.