The Impact of Problem-Solving Tasks on Oral Proficiency among Iranian upper-Intermediate EFL Learners

This study examined the effect of problem-solving tasks on upper-intermediate Iranian EFL learners' oral performance. In the first step, ۵۲ homogeneous upper-intermediate students from intact classes were chosen from a private language institute in Zarrindasht, Fars, Iran and randomly divided into two equal groups, namely an experimental group and a control group. Then they were pretested through a researcher-made speaking test extracted from Prospect۳. The learners in the experimental group received problem-solving tasks. And the control group, on the other hand, was engaged in the ordinary program of the classroom; they were taught using the audio-lingual method of teaching; they did not receive the problem-solving tasks. After the treatment which took ۱۲ sessions, the researcher administered the modified version of the mentioned pre-test as the post-test to find out the effect of the problem-solving tasks on the participants' oral performance. When the data were collected, Independent and Paired Samples T-tests were run to analyze them. The results showed that experimental group outperformed the control group in the post-test. The findings indicated that problem-solving tasks improved upper-intermediate Iranian EFL learners' oral performance

کلیدواژه ها:

Oral Proficiency ، Problem-Solving Tasks ، Upper-intermediate EFL Learners.