The Role of Attitudes in Developing EFL Learners' Interactive Conversation

The purpose of the study was to investigate the role of attitudes in developing EFL learners' interactive conversation.The research sample included 50 EFL students studying English as a foreign language at different English language institutes in Ahawz. They were non-randomly divided into two identical groups, One group was experimental group and the other one was the control group .The researcher taught the conversation of daily activities to the experimental group based on the attitude-based approach. This approach is to teach interactive conversation strategies. The control group was taught based on the traditional method of teaching conversation like question and answer and doing the textbook exercises from New Interchange 1 fourth edition by Richards (2011).After the treatment, Data were analyzed through a paired and independent samples test. Results showed that the attitude-based approach to teaching interactive conversation strategies significantly improved the learners' speaking skill and conversation strategies. Finally,it was found that Iranian students with a high and positive attitude level perform better interactive conversation level than students with low attitude level. Implications suggest the findings of this research can be used by English language teachers to consider the importance of attitude-based approach to teaching interactive conversation and speaking skill strategies.

Keywords:

Attitude , SFL learning , experimental group , control group , Interactive conversation , speaking skill strategies