Investigating the Effect of Noticing on EFL Students' Speaking Accuracy

Abstract

The present study aims at investigating the effect of noticing on English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students' speaking accuracy. For so doing, 32 Iranian EFL students were selected and randomly assigned to two conversation classes namely, control and experimental groups. Before the treatment both groups had a speaking pre-test. During 32 sessions of instruction, both classes were taught EFL conversation based on Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach. However, in the experimental group, in order to help learners notice the input more, the students were asked to record their authentic conversations, presentations, and dialogues in the class. Then, they were asked to transcribe their voices and identify their grammatical, phonological and lexico-semantic errors based on Keshavarz's (1999) Model of Error Analysis. Their teacher also checked their voice files and transcriptions in order to help them identify their errors. After the treatment both groups had a speaking post-test. Then, the number of speaking errors the two groups had in the pre-test and post-test were compared using ANCOVA. The results indicated that the EFL learners in the experimental group had a significantly lower number of speaking errors in the post-test compared with that of the control group which confirmed the positive effect of noticing on EFL students' speaking accuracy.

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