An Investigation of Errors in the Oral Performance of Advanced-level Iranian EFL Students

Abstract

The skill of speaking in a non-native language has been the subject of many scholarly investigations and different aspects of it have been meticulously examined in recent decades. However, one dimension of this crucial foreign language skill, i.e. errors of advanced language learners, has apparently received less than adequate attention as the bulk of relevant research has focused almost exclusively on speaking errors of beginning-level and intermediate-level learners. To delve into this under-researched line of research, the researcher benefited from the oral performances of a group of twenty advanced-level Iranian students of English. The oral presentations of the participants were recorded and then grammatical, lexical and pronunciational errors featuring in them were identified, categorized and analyzed. The findings illustrate that, contrary to what might be assumed, advanced-level learners commit numerous errors in all the foregoing categories, especially in pronunciation and grammar. The findings, therefore, reveal the need for more scholarly research on linguistic errors of advanced-level EFL learners. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n4p171