The Impact of TED-Vodcast on Iranian EFL Learners' Academic Oral Proficiency

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of TED-Vodcast on academic oral proficiency, with a focus on accuracy and fluency of Iranian intermediate EFL learners. There is no doubt that most of the university students in different fields of study face a lot of hardships while attending international conferences for presenting a paper which is due to lack of English proficiency. In this research, 34 female freshman students of English Language and Literature at Semnan University aged between 18-27 were selected and assigned into 2 groups of experimental (N=19) and control (N=15). TED-Vodcast was integrated into experimental group and conventional method of teaching listening and speaking was applied for the control group. Both groups took pretest and posttest which were in the form of interviews. The relation of 3 dependent variables of the two groups were computed by MANOVA and independent sample T-test was used as well. The findings of the study indicated that TED-Vodcast had significant effects on learners' oral proficiency as well as accuracy but not on fluency.