THE IMPACT OF SPEECH RATE ON IRANIAN INTERMEDIATE EFL LEARNERS' LISTENING COMPREHENSION ABILITY

This study was conducted to investigate the impact of speech rate on Iranian Intermediate EFL learners' listening comprehension ability. For this purpose 60 learners of English at a language institute participated in this study. Having being homogenized by an Oxford placement test (OPT), 44 female learners were selected and they were randomly assigned into two groups of 22, control and experimental. The age of the subjects ranged from 14 to 18 years old. Then both groups sat for a pretest, which was a listening comprehension test. The purpose of this test was to measure the learners' initial subject knowledge of listening comprehension ability. Afterwards, the experimental group received treatment based on speech rate. However, the control group received no treatment and approached the traditional way of teaching. The treatment procedure took 7 sessions. Finally, at the end of the course both groups sat for the posttest of listening comprehension. Then the statistical analysis was run through T-test and one way ANCOVA. It was explored from the study that learners' listening comprehension improves more when they are provided with speech rate. However, this study provides a significant contribution in curriculum innovation and policy with respect to the learners' listening comprehension development.