شیرین آبادی خواه

This study investigates the effect of self-transcription and expert scaffolding on the accuracy of oral production of EFL learners. Thirty elementary level and six advanced level EFL learners from a private language institution in Sari, Iran, participated in this study. The elementary learners formed two experimental groups that were engaged in self-transcription (n=10) and self-transcription followed by expert scaffolding (n=10) and one control group (n=10). Another group of advanced learners (n=6) were invited to participate as the expert assistants. A picture description task was administered to all the elementary participants as their pre-test and post-test. Furthermore, their oral performance in all stages of the study was audio-recorded one at a time. Finally, the participants' oral performance in the pre-test and post-test was analysed based on the accuracy rate of five linguistic features (verb form, preposition, pronoun, subject-verb agreement and vocabulary) and error-free clauses. The analysis showed that both treatment types of self-transcription with or without scaffolding had significant effect on improving the accuracy of two linguistic features (preposition and verb form) and error-free clauses. It can be implied that self-transcribing an oral production and expert scaffolding can be conducive to noticing the gaps in some linguistic features, which under normal circumstances are hard to recall and notice. The findings of the study provide some pedagogical implications for employing these techniques in EFL contexts for improving the overall accuracy of oral production.