Abstract—This study aimed to investigate medical students’ attitudes toward some teachers’ talking features regarding their gender in the Iranian context. To do so, 60 male and 60 female medical students of Urmia University of Medical Sciences (UMSU) participated in the research. A researcher made Likert-type questionnaire which was initially piloted and was used to gather the data. Comparing the four different factors regarding the features of teacher talk, it was revealed that visual and extra-linguistic information factor, Lexical and syntactic familiarity, Speed of speech, and the use of Persian language had the highest to the lowest mean score, respectively. It was also indicated that female students rather than male students were significantly more in favor of speed of speech and lexical and syntactic familiarity. Keywords—Attitude, gender, medical student, teacher talk. I. INTRODUCTION HE classroom is a typical context in which students face with foreign language features. Accordingly, foreign language (FL) learners have little or no direct contact with the target language, the people, or the culture outside of classroom [1]. FL Learners only contact with teachers’ talk in their FL classrooms. The kind of language used by the teacher for instruction in the classroom is known as teacher talk (TT) [2]. Allwright and Bailey [3, p. 139] claim that “talk is one of the major ways that teachers convey information to learners, and it is also one of the primary means of controlling learner behavior”. Therefore, the TT phenomenon is a very important behavior in FL learning, and it is a main source of language exposure in a language learning classroom; therefore, teachers should use more comprehensible speech during their instructions [4]. Nunan [5, p, 189] confirms that “Teacher talk is of crucial importance, not only for the organization of the classroom but also for the processes of acquisition”. Teachers can use their talk and make it useful through a controlled utilization of their talk [6]. The current research was an attempt to investigate the attitudes of medical students toward TT behavior in UMSU. The first objective of the study was to find out the main Ismail Baniadam (MA) is with the TEFL, Urmia University of Medical Sciences, Iran, Islamic Republic Of (corresponding author, phone: +989147990778, e-mail: smail1baniadam@gmail.com). Nafisa Tadayyon (MA) is with the General Linguistics, Alzahra University, Iran, Islamic Republic Of (e-mail: azdilmaj@gmail.com). Javid Fereidoni (Ph.D) is with the Sociolinguistics, English Department of Urmia University of Medical Sciences, Iran, Islamic Republic Of (e-mail: javid.fereidoni@gmail.com). factors in medical students’ attitudes toward some features of the TT phenomenon. The second objective aimed to investigate male and female students’ attitudes towards some features of TT in order to see differences. This study intends to explore such helpful insights by examining four major features of English TT from medical students' perspectives including (a) rate of speech, (b) lexical and syntactic familiarity, (c) visual and extra-linguistic information, and (d) the use of Persian language. In the past, most of the researches on TT [4], [7]-[9] have merely worked on the analysis of various phenomena about TT and its characters and structures. There is no research relating to the attitudes of students about TT in the Iranian context. Due to the importance of TT in language classes, the present study aims to investigate medical students’ attitudes toward some features of TT in the EFL context regarding their gender. II. LITERATURE REVIEW Scientific studies on the TT phenomenon started in the early mid-1980s. These studies were inspired by different findings from ‘caretaker speech’ studies in first language development [10], [11] and ‘foreigner talk’ research in natural second language acquisition [12], [13]. Park [14, p. 19] illustrated that “foreigner talk is used as a general term for the modified language that native speakers use with non-native speakers”. ‘Caretaker speech’ register is a discourse utilized by adults when speaking with babies or young children who do not have full adult competence in the language [15], [16]. TT research evolved partly because of the theory of instructed second language acquisition proposed by Krashen and Terrell [17]. They argue that TT is an indispensable source of comprehensible input in the second language classroom. They also emphasized that TT may be considered, in a sense, as ‘caretaker speech’ or ‘foreigner talk’ in the second language classroom. TT is the language typically utilized by FL instructors during the time spent instructing. According to Park [14, p. 21], TT is considered as “the systematic simplification such as lexical, phonological, and grammatical modifications” . Long and Porter [18] also confirm that TT includes features such as reduced, simplified forms, and less complex syntactic and idiomatic expressions mainly in the EFL context. EFL is an acronym for English as a Foreign Language, and is studied by individuals who live in a context where the target language (in this case English) is not the language of Investigating Medical Students’ Perspectives toward University Teachers’ Talking Features in an English as a Foreign Language Context in Urmia, Iran Ismail Baniadam, Nafisa Tadayyon, Javid Fereidoni T World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Cognitive and Language Sciences Vol:12, No:2, 2018 287 International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 12(2) 2018 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/10008597 International Science Index, Cognitive and Language Sciences Vol:12, No:2, 2018 waset.org/Publication/10008597