Foreign Language Learners Dropping out of Language Classes: Honoring Dropouts’ Voice

Many language learners in foreign language contexts leave their courses halfway before reaching advanced levels of proficiency. Despite a large body of research on dropping out of school or higher education programs, few have delved into this multi-faceted phenomenon in language institutes and tutorial language courses. The current study, utilizing a qualitative approach, aimed at investigating EFL learners dropping out of face-to-face language classes in Iran. To this end, 20 participants were interviewed to explore their main reasons for abandoning classes in 44 dropout instances. The interviewees’ responses were analyzed and reported through six phases of data familiarization and note-making; systematic data-coding; initial-themes generation; themes development and review; themes refinement, definition, and naming; and the report writing. Forty-nine major reasons were found which were classified into 5 themes of satisfying need for higher priority, teacher-induced dissatisfaction, administrator-induced dissatisfaction, satisfied language-class-related need, and improvement-related dissatisfaction. Administrator-induced dissatisfaction, however, was specific to public classes in language institutes – not private ones. Since English is taught mainly for academic purposes in Iran, the findings have implications for both research and practice purposes concerning any foreign language.