Exploring the Students' Perception of Talking to Foreigners

Abstract

Many EFL learners have learned English since secondary school until academic but several of them never practiced their English with English speakers. Thus, this research aimed at (i) exploring the students’ perception of talking to foreigners, and (ii) knowing the lesson got by the students after talking to foreigners. This research was done by using a qualitative approach and descriptive design. The researcher applied a Purposive sampling technique in determining the participants. The total number of participants was 104 students. The data were collected by using a questionnaire. The data were analyzed by Miles and Huberman’s framework namely data reduction, data display, and drawing then verifying the conclusion. The results of this research are (i) exploring the students’ perception of talking to foreigners namely the EFL students had difficulty speaking English, lacked confidence, and felt nervous, challenging and made them enthusiastic, training to improve their English language skills, and interesting. Based on the percentage of data analysis results found that 56% of the students had difficulties in talking with foreigners, whereas 54% of the students gave exciting responses (ii) The lessons they got after talking or interviewing foreigners are they knew some new vocabularies and knew how to speak English properly, knew the culture, habits, tourist attractions, special foods, and how to make special food in their country.