Strategy Training Effects on Iranian Prospective IELTS Candidates’ Speaking Scores

The present study was intended to scrutinize the impact of strategy training and topic familiarity on IELTS speaking test scores among Persian-speaking EFL learners who were going to take Academic or General Training IELTS exams. A group of 45 EFL learners participated in the treatment, presenting speaking strategies and making participants familiar with the most frequent topics in the IELTS exams. Participants of the study were divided in three groups of 15, namely Strategy Training and Topic Familiarity groups, which constitute the experimental groups, and the Control group. In the experimental groups, participants were given strategies they required to answer IELTS speaking questions, for both experimental groups, and the most frequent topics talked about in such exams, for the Topic Familiarity group. Participants took part in the nine-session treatment, with the first interview as the pretest and the last one as the posttest. Results of one-way ANOVAs and t-tests showed that whereas strategy training did make a difference in participants‘ performances in the posttest, topic familiarity did not. Results indicate that if EFL learners are familiar with strategies used in speaking, they can manage any speaking situation irrespective of the topic

کلیدواژه ها:

strategy training ، speaking strategies ، topic familiarity ، IELTS speaking test