The Effect of Translating Persian Stories on Iranian Intermediate EFL Learners’ Speaking Ability

Abstract

The current study attempts to determine the effect of translating Persian stories on Iranian intermediate EFL Learners’ speaking ability.To achieve this, sixty intermediate Iranian EFL learners were selected through a cluster random sampling procedure. Because of the institute’s policy and regular teaching program, it was not possible to assign all of the participants into the two groups randomly, and thus the students were required to remain intact in their regular classes during the intervention time slots. They formed two groups, namely Control and Experimental groups. Before the study, the participants of both group had a pre-test of speaking. Then the Participants in the control group were treated with the existing method of teaching speaking (Communicative Language Teaching Approach: CLT) but the participants in the experimental group had some translation tasks in addition to being instructed through CLT that was translating Persian stories into English. The treatment lasted for five weeks, each week two sessions. After the treatment was finished, the participant in both groups of the study took the speaking ability post-test. Their post-test scores were analyzed through ANCOVA, and the result indicated that the experimental group performed significantly better that the control group after the intervention. Keywords: Speaking ability, Translation, Persian stories, Intermediate level.