The Effect of Learners’ Autonomous Textbook Selection on Intermediate Iranian EFL Learners’ Speaking Ability

Abstract

Abstract The ability to employ the language as a communicational tool often serves as a measure of one’s speaking success in the language learning class. This research sought to investigate the effect of learners’ autonomous textbook selection on the speaking ability of Iranian English as foreign language (EFL) learners. Moreover, finding and analyzing factors considered by the learners in selecting the textbooks were another aim of this research. Sixty Iranian intermediate EFL learners from the Simin Language Institute in Ramsar, Mazandaran, Iran, were selected as the participants of the study based on their scores on Oxford Placement Test. This test determines the level of the students’ English proficiency. These participants were randomly assigned into the control and experimental groups. An interview procedure was run as their pretest. The experimental group studied from their selected books, besides the researcher’s teaching in the class. After 16 sessions, a posttest, the same as the pretest, was run as well. The quantitative results indicated the superior performance of the experimental group over the control group. Furthermore, an analysis of the Litz’s (2000) questionnaire shows that learners considered criteria such as practical considerations, layout and design, activities, skills, language type, subject and content of the selected books.