The Effect of Prompt Types (Metalinguistic Clues versus Elicitation) on Iranian EFL Learners’ Immediate versus Delayed Speaking Accuracy

The purpose of the study was to investigate the impact of two types of prompts(metalinguistic clues and elicitation) on Iranian EFL learners’ immediate versus delayedspeaking accuracy. For this purpose, 40 female, pre-intermediate participants were selectedout of 100 learners through a standard preliminary English test (OPT), and they were assigned to two groups. Subsequently, the researcher had different treatments and immediateassessment during speaking activities of each group in order to check their effectiveness onimprovement of speaking accuracy of learners. Two weeks after the treatment phase, aposttest was administered in order to see if there was any improvement in speaking accuracyof learners. The data obtained from both pretest and postest were analysed. The finding ofthis study indicated that between these two types of propts, elicitation had significantly morepositive effect on the both short term and long term improvement of speaking accuracy andperformance of pre-intermediate Iranian EFL learners. Also, it was found that the types ofprompts (feedback strategies) had significantly differential impact on the speaking accuracyof the learners with metalinguistic clues having the highest impact.