The Relationship between Iranian EFL Learners' Risk Taking Strategy Use and Speaking Skill

Personal factors have been shown in the literature to relate to language learning. Based on a correlational research design, the present study attempted to investigate the relationship between risk-taking and speaking skill. Moreover, findings out the differences among different levels of risk- taking groups (low, middle, high) in term of speaking skill. For checking the homogeneity of the students’L2 proficiancy level, the PET test including four skills questions; listening, reading, writing and two tasks for speaking skill were used. Also, the speaking part of the PET test was used in order to gather the speech samples of participants. Thirty out of forty (Total participants) female university students responded to the risk-taking questionnaire. The statistical tests of Pearson Product-moment correlation co-efficient, Spearman’s Rho correlation co-efficient, Descriptive Statistic, one way ANOVA and Turkey HSD test were used in order to analyze data. The findings suggest that there is a significant relationship between risk-taking and Iranian EFL students’ speaking skill. Also, the results of Tukey test (Multiple Comparison) indicated that, the participants in Middle risk-taking group were better than the High and Low groups. The pedagogical implication of this study is that teachers and students can incorporate risk-taking strategies into their teaching and learning process. Furthermore, Moderate risktakers learn to tolerate the ambiguity that oral tasks usually bring with them

Keywords:

Positive Risk Taking (PRT) , Risk Literacy , Risk , The Functions of Speaking Skill , The Meanings of Speaking Skill