Effect of Online Strategies-Based Instruction on Iranian EFL Learners’ Speaking Scores: A Case of Affective and Social Strategies Instruction

Enhancing speaking ability is an important component of the acquirement of a language. The present study focused on improving speaking ability through online strategy-based instruction. The innovation aspect of this study is applying the Moodle course management system as an instructional platform. To this end, a group of ۸۰ Iranian female and male students at the intermediate level participated in the treatment. Participants of the study were divided into four groups of ۲۰. The subjects in experimental groups benefited from two particular instructional focuses of this study include social and affective strategies. In order to assess the effect of the treatment pre and posttests design were utilized. Consequently, the data were analyzed through One-Way ANOVAs and t-tests. The findings revealed that strategy treatment was successful in improving the participants’ speaking ability. However, there was no significant difference between the performance of male and female treatment groups. Therefore, the findings suggest that online strategy-based instruction can positively influence the speaking ability of Iranian intermediate EFL learners. This study may have pedagogical implications for material practitioners, CALL package designers and distance learning planners to include strategy instruction in English courses. Keywords: Moodle, Online learning, Social and affective strategies, Speaking ability, Strategy instruction

Keywords:

Online learning , Language learning strategies , Speaking ability , Strategy instruction