Pages: 7-17

Abstract

Speaking ability is one of the major skills of English learning that is difficult to deal with and needs much attention and specific care. Since most of the students’ needs and difficulties are treated by their teacher, it seems beyond the means of an only teacher to investigate all problems and deficiencies, and find proper solution for them. Besides the only teacher has limited knowledge and resources to deal with all upcoming difficulties, and when it is done, one cannot monitor his/her own actions towards the sufficiency of it. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to see to what extent does the implication of the principles of critical friends’ techniques, affect the speaking ability of Iranian intermediate EFL learners. Therefore, in study quasi-experimental study that used a pretest, treatment (critical friends’ principles), and post-test, there was one control group (N= 25), and one experimental group (N=28) with both male and female young adult learners. The SPSS software was used to compute and analyze the amount of the treatments impact, and the independent t-test built up the core statistical analyses of the study. During the treatment phase, the principles of critical friends were implemented in order to have its results affect the students’ learning, specifically their speaking ability which was the focus of the study. The findings of this study showed a significant difference between the experimental and control groups, proving the positive effect of using critical friends on improving students' speaking skills.