The Effect of Awareness-Raising Instruction on Oral Communication Strategy Use of Iranian Students with Different Language Proficiency

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M.A in English Language Teaching

Department of English Language

The Effect of Awareness-Raising Instruction on Oral Communication Strategy Use of Iranian Students with Different Language Proficiency Levels

Abstract

Given the influence of metacognitive strategy instruction on the development of oral skills, the present study was set up to incorporate awareness-raising strategies into Iranian EFL classrooms to address the effect of awareness-raising instruction (ARI) on oral communication performance and on oral communication strategy use of Iranian language learners across different proficiency levels. The participants were 180 undergraduate students in one of the universities in Shiraz, Iran who were selected by availability sampling. Using the Oxford placement test, students were grouped as elementary, intermediate and advanced, respectively. Students at each level were randomly placed in the control and experimental groups. In the control class, the instructor followed the traditional procedure of the listening and speaking class, whereas in the experimental class, she introduced the ARI to the classes and taught them how to use and employ metacognitive strategies during communication. The present study had a quasi-experimental design and data were collected using the oral communication task for pretest and posttest which were scored by the Assessment Scale, and the oral communication strategy inventory (OCSI). Descriptive statistics, T-Tests, and One-way ANOVA were performed to analyze the data. The results generally confirmed the positive influence of ARI on oral communication performance and OCSU with the experimental groups utilizing more metacognitive strategies. Significant differences were observed between OCSU of students with different proficiency levels with high proficiency group utilizing higher proportion of negotiation for meaning while speaking, fluency-oriented and social affective strategies.