Somayeh Azadi - Department of English Language Teaching, Ilam Branch, Islamic Azad University, Ilam, Iran

This study explored the impact of teaching speaking strategies on improvement of speaking and the relationship between education degree and speaking proficiency among Iranian EFL learners. The learners‟ speaking proficiency level was identified at the beginning of the research study, and was measured at the end of the research to find out whether teaching speaking strategies improved their speaking proficiency. For conducting the research, 30 intermediate English language learners were studied. The research pursued a pretest/posttest control group design to examine the research questions. The results revealed that after teaching speaking strategies the frequency of the use of these strategies was increased and the learners‟ speaking performance was enhanced. The learners with higher education degree were more successful in their performance. Thus there was a positive relationship between education degree and improvement of speaking proficiency.

speaking, speaking strategies, interaction, EFL learners