Cultural influences on the oral communication strategies used by pre-service teachers and teacher educators: an investigation of English medium classrooms in Central Mindanao, the Philippines

This study investigates the oral communication strategies used by pre-service teachers and the oral instructional strategies used by teacher educators in English medium classrooms within the Philippines, a country characterised by a high-context and high power distance socio-cultural milieu. The government of the Philippines wants its citizens to develop communicative competence in English, considered essential in an era of Asian globalisation and modernisation. There have been few studies that have examined the way in which a high-context/high power distance culture affects the development of students’ oral communication in English. As such, this study is an innovative exploration of the communicative interactions between pre-service teachers and teacher educators in the Philippines. Data were gathered from pre-service teachers and teacher educators in three teacher education institutions located in Central Mindanao. The investigation used a mixed method approach that included surveys, focus group interviews, and classroom observations. The study investigated the following areas in particular: the oral communication strategies used by pre-service teachers; the oral instructional strategies used by teacher educators; the strategies considered helpful by pre-service teachers and teacher educators; the level of agreement between pre-service teachers and teacher educators on helpfulness of strategies; and links between communication strategies and the high- context/high power distance culture that characterizes the Philippines. Findings from the three sources of data show general agreement between pre-service teachers and teacher educators in terms of the types of communication strategies each use and in terms of the strategies they find useful. These strategies can be located within the framework of a high-context/high power distance culture. It is argued that many of these strategies do not facilitate oral communication, and that current approaches to classroom communication could be improved by adjusting the strategies used by both pre-service teachers and teacher educators. Consequently, a set of recommendations to enhance oral communication in English medium classes in teacher education institutions is put forward.