A Comparison of the Effects of Teacher's Speaking Accuracy Vs. Fluency on EFL Learners' Oral Skill

Abstract

Speaking a language involves more than simply knowing the linguistic components of the message, and developing language skills requires more than grammatical comprehension and vocabulary memorization (Chastain, 1988). In teaching-learning processes, some methods which teachers use and the teachers' own speaking accuracy and  fluency in the ELT classes for the foreign language students especially in Iran may have some positive and negative effects on ELT students' speaking fluency and accuracy. This study attempts to probe one of the main concerns of language learners, that is, how to improve their speaking components, e.g. oral fluency and accuracy through comparison of the effects of teacher's speaking accuracy vs. fluency on EFL learners' oral skill. The current study was designed as a true experimental research and the data were gathered from 60 ELT students of English language and literature in Iran. The data were the recorded speaking transcripts which were analyzed to show the probable progresses after four-time (10 weeks) treatment. The factors to be considered in present study were the numbers of filled and unfilled pauses in each narration, the total number of words per minute, mean length of utterance, and number of stressed words. The results were compared and their temporal and linguistic measures were correlated with their fluency scores. They revealed that the speech rate, the mean length of utterance, phonation time ratio and the number of stressed words produced per minute were the best predictors of fluency scores, and thus, students' speaking fluency increased, whereas the students' speaking accuracy  decreased in some areas of speaking abilities and oral communications.