Mahboobeh Abedi - Department of English Language, Malayer Branch, Islamic Azad University, Malayer, Iran
Abbas Bayat - Department of English Language, Malayer Branch, Islamic Azad University, Malayer, Iran
Hossein Ahmadi - Department of English Language, Malayer Branch, Islamic Azad University, Malayer, Iran

Speaking is challenging for EFL learners as it calls for grammatical competence and discourse knowledge, including Discourse Markers (DM), which help them speak naturally. This study sought to investigate the effect of extensive listening tasks on the use of DMs in speaking by Iranian intermediate EFL learners. Sixty intermediate EFL learners were randomly assigned into two experimental and control groups. The participants' oral production was checked in the two groups before the treatment, and the frequency and types of DMs were detected. For the treatment, the participants in the experimental group were required to listen to different short stories as part of out-of-class activities for three months. However, the control group did not receive extensive listening tasks. A posttest was administered only one day after the last treatment session to realize the impact of the treatment on the participants' use of DMs. After four weeks, a delayed posttest was administered to examine the participants' long-term DM use. The data collected from the posttest and delayed posttest were then analyzed using independent paired samples t-tests. The findings indicated that extensive listening tasks did not impact the use of DMs in speaking by Iranian EFL learners at the intermediate level. The results of the delayed posttest did not yield any significant difference either.

Discourse markers, Extensive Listening, Intermediate EFL Learners, Speaking Skill