The Effect of Teaching Strategic Competence on Speaking Performance of EFL Learners

Abstract

—Communicative strategies have always been of much concern to applied linguists. Whether teaching communicative strategies has any significant impact on second language learners' speaking or not has also controversial among language teachers. This study aimed at investigating the effect of explicit teaching of some of the communicative strategies (CSs) on language performance of Iranian language learners of English. It was also an attempt to study the stability of teaching CSs. The participants of the study were 60 male and female language learners. The experimental group received a 10-week-treatment on CSs. The data were gathered through three oral production tests consisting of the same tasks including group discussion, story retelling, and picture description. The data were analyzed through descriptive and inferential statistics (Chi-square test). The results of the study indicated that there was significant difference between control and experimental groups in the use of CSs; whereas, the results of the first posttest showed that there was a significant difference between the groups in the use of seven out of the nine strategies. Moreover, the results indicated that the effect of teaching CSs was stable even after a long interval. Index Terms—teaching communication strategies, teaching stability, Iranian language learners, speaking proficiency One of the most important and at the same time controversial issues over the past few decades has been teachability of communication strategies (CSs). Most experienced teachers believe that a prevalent problem that a lot of language teachers and learners face is learners' reluctance to participate in conversations and other speech events. Hence, they would rather shift to their native language to get their messages across or try to be silent which leads to a communication break. Although this disinclination can be attributed to such affective factors as lack of motivation or self-confidence and embarrassment or to such external factors like impractical language teaching methods and materials, it can mostly be the result of lack of communicative strategies necessary for L2 speakers when faced with communication problems. Therefore, this study is an attempt to find out whether CSs can be taught or not. Moreover, it aims at specifying the durability and stability of CSs after the treatment. In doing so the following research questions were raised. 1. What is the effect of teaching strategic competence on speaking performance of Iranian English language learners? 2. Is the effect of teaching communicative competence stable after a long time? I. LITERATURE REVIEW