Teachers’ Perspectives on the Benefits and Challenges of F-move Use in EFL Classrooms

Abstract

This study investigates the use of the F-move strategy for EFL university classroom interaction and its perceived benefits and challenges. To this end, a qualitative approach was employed, in which semi-structured interviews were conducted with fourteen Kurdish EFL teachers. The study was carried out in the English departments of the College of Basic Education and the College of Education at Salahaddin University-Erbil. The findings reveal that Kurdish EFL teachers use F-move very frequently. Furthermore, the participating teachers reported several benefits of using F-move, including the development of students’ communicative and linguistic skills, increased motivation and confidence to participate, enhanced critical thinking, and a supportive classroom environment. However, time constraints, large class sizes, students’ shyness, high levels of anxiety, low self-esteem, lack of participation, brief responses, and exam washback tend to constrain teachers’ ability to use the F-move effectively. In contemporary language teaching, the importance of F-move in promoting deep learning has been identified. Theoretical frameworks suggest that the third turn of the IRF exchange can develop classroom dialogue from a simple question-answer routine to an authentic conversation, enabling teachers to correct students’ errors, sustain interaction, and encourage higher-order thinking. In practice, teachers seem to implement F-move in its most restrictive form, merely to evaluate students’ responses