THE EFFECT OF INTERACTIONAL AND TRANSACTIONAL SPEAKING STRATEGIES ON TEACHING SPEAKING SKILLS TO IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS AT SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL LEVEL

The purpose of this experimental study was to investigate the effectiveness of interactional and transactional speaking strategies by using the technique which comes from Audio Lingual Method (ALM) and Total Physical Response (TPR) method on teaching speaking skills to Iranian English as foreign language (EFL) learners in senior high school. It attempted to enhance studentsʹ speaking skills among Iranian high school students. In doing the research, 60 female learners were selected in a senior high school in Gachsaran, Iran. They were in the first grade of senior high school with the age ranging from15-17. They took proficiency test (Richards, 2007) and the learners whose scores were one standard deviation above and one standard deviation below the mean were selected as the research sample. Then 60 learners were randomly divided in two experimental and one control group. The participants were given a pre-test on speaking tasks and scored through a speaking check list proposed by Chastain (1988, pp. 397-400) throughout a 10-session treatment, the Experimental groups received transactional and interactional strategies for speaking fluency while the control group received some placeboes. Finally, a post-test was administered to three groups and data were collected. Data were analyzed through One-way ANOVA was utilized to analyze learners interview scores based on the check list. Results showed that transactional group, outperformed both interactional and control. This study suggests that the use of transactional activities (p < 0.05) in speaking skill could be more beneficial activities since it is the use of contextual speech in a meaningful way.