Sustaining Meaning-Oriented Contexts in EFL Classroom Discourse: An Experimental Study

This study aimed to examine the effect of running a teacher education program informed by meaning-oriented-context (MOC) sustainability framework on the mean lengths of time on such a context in EFL classes. To this aim, 30 teachers and 300 learners were randomly assigned to an experimental and a control group. Upon making sure of no significant initial difference in the mean lengths of time on MOCs between the two groups, the teachers in the experimental group received treatment whereas the teachers in the control group received no treatment. Then, each of the teachers in both groups was assigned a specific unit from a textbook to teach over three sessions. Afterwards, the mean lengths of time on MOCs were measured in minute and compared between the two groups using an independent-samples t-test. Analyses of the data showed a significant effect for MOC sustainability framework in the sense that there was a significant difference in the mean lengths of time on the context between the experimental and control groups after the intervention.