ELTWeekly Newsletter Vol. 3 Issue#96 | August 29, 2011 | ISSN 0975-3036

Vahid Rahmani Doqaruni holds an M.A. in TEFL from Mazandaran University, Iran. He has been teaching English in private language institutes and Entrepreneurship Center of Mazandaran University in Iran during the last 5 years. His major research interests are: Action research and discourse analysis.

This article reports on an action research on increasing the Iranian EFL students’ confidence in speaking. Although speaking skills are an important part of the curriculum in language teaching and the ability to speak in a foreign language is at the very heart of what it means to be able to use a foreign language, some of the students keep silent all the time in class. 12 female university students from different fields of study participated in this study. The method used in this study was based on a student-centered approach that incorporated more participation and challenged traditional teacher-student relations. As a result, the students’ confidence increased because of incorporating additional speaking activities into the classroom.

1. Introduction

Speaking skills are an important part of the curriculum in language teaching and the ability to speak in a foreign language is at the very heart of what it means to be able to use a foreign language. Our personality, our self-image, our knowledge of the world and our ability to reason and express our thoughts are all reflected in our spoken performance in a foreign language. Being able to speak to friends, colleagues, visitors and even strangers, in their language or in a language which both speakers can understand, is surely the goal of very many learners (Luoma, 2004). So we have to devote a high proportion of class time to developing oral productive skills. There are several purposes in oral practice: (more…)