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The Efficacy of Topic Familiarity on Oral Presentation: Extensive Speaking Assessment Task of Iranian EFL Learners in TBLT
Abstract
In order to communicate effectively, EFL learners require considering a variety of linguistic, contextual, cultural, and interactional aspects of complex communicative process of English learning along with receiving appropriate tasks. The tasks of speaking assessment are of paramount importance in EFL settings. The current study focused on one main factor that has been proposed in TBLT, i.e. topic familiarity to investigate the effect of topic familiarity on EFL oral presentations. The participants were 30 female intermediate participants ranged from 14 to 18 year old studying at one English language institute in Shiraz, Iran. A sample model of Oxford Placement Test was used to determine the participants' level of English proficiency. Then, the participants were asked to give impromptu presentations about unfamiliar topics. Their oral presentations were evaluated as pre-tests. In order to administer post-tests participants were asked to work on a new topic for the subsequent session. All oral presentations were evaluated through Brown and Abeywickrama (2010) checklist. Using SPSS software, paired- sample t-test was used to analyze the collected data. The results indicated that there was significant difference between mean scores of pre-tests and post-tests. The findings of this study indicate that topic familiarity has an influence on learners' oral presentations.
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.4n.3p.93
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