摘要：High level oral and aural language skills are needed to participate with native speakers in class discussions. This study reveals the findings from interview research where the researcher reports on the EFL graduate students’ expressions of the particular difficulties and challenges in their academic programs needed to satisfy the oral skills based academic requirements for both male and female interviewees. 21 students from various graduate programs participated in this study. This study shows the EFL students’ low satisfaction with their infrequent participation in the group discussion environment. EFL students tend to prefer small group discussions because they can participate in class discussion with less anxiety without being forced to compete within a larger group of native speakers. When EFL students participate in class discussion, insufficient content knowledge is a key issue which for most EFL students serves only to inhibit their active participation in class discussion. The amount of reading a student does to build a pre-class knowledge base for a given topic or issue insures a higher frequency of participation in class discussion.
