the effect of consciousness raising of sociolinguistic skills on speaking ability of iranian efl learners

abstract the main purpose of this study was to investigate whether there was any significant difference between the speaking achievement of learners who were trained by means of consciousness raising of sociolinguistic skills and that of learners who were trained without the above mentioned task. the participants of this study consist of 60 intermediate level students participating language classes in moshanir company. the students were randomly chosen from among those who participate in english classes in the company. at the commence of the study a tofel test was conducted in order to homogenize the sample group and to ensure that the students were at the same level of speaking proficiency. the students whose obtained scores where one standard deviation above and below the mean on the tofel test were chosen as the participants for the main study. upon the completion of the tofel test 40 students were randomly chosen from among the 60 students and were assigned to two experimental and control groups, each consisting of 20 students, the participants were both male and female between the age of 25 to 50 . there was an equal distribution of males and females across the experimental and control groups meaning that there were 20 male and 20 female participants in each group. each group was instructed using of formal and informal structure in speaking and attended a free discussion speaking class but in the experimental group a consciousness raising of sociolinguistic skills were done before the discussion and such a treatment was absent in the control group. after the treatment an independent sample t-test was calculated and the result showed that the null hypothesis could be rejected at 0.05 level of significance. regarding the research question of this study ,the statistical analysis of the collected data revealed that there was a significant difference between the impact of consciousness’ raising of sociolinguistic skills and the absent of such a treatment in free discussion speaking classes on the development of students speaking ability .