The Relationship between the Cultural Identity of the Iranian EFL Students and their Speaking Proficiency

The present study made an attempt to examine cultural identity as a factor potentially prompting English language speaking production, an area that has only recently begun to receive much attention in the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research. This study focused on three tasks to analyze the speaking performance of the participants (sixty EFL learners). As the first instrument, a modified Michigan test was used to select sixty male and female learners at the same level of proficiency from among 100 pre-intermediate learners of English language. The findings of the study showed that cultural identity affects speaking; that is, holding a secondary identity and readiness to learn a foreign language affects foreign language speaking of Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students.  The findings of the present study can be implied as a warning to both EFL learners and instructors in Iran that language learners do not show any interest in following a native-like accent. Moreover, the learners are not provided with the required facilities to improve their speaking skills.