Influence of Visually Enhanced Instructional Material on Speaking Skill of Iranian EFL Learners

The purpose of the current study was to explore the effect of visually enhanced material instruction on EFL students’ speaking skills. For this purpose, forty-five Iranian pre-intermediate EFL students in four intact classes were selected through convenience sampling and received instruction, of which 23 comprised the treatment group and 22 comprised the control group. During Autumn 2021, the treatment group received visual material instruction in speaking skills for approximately 60 minutes per week, which lasted for ten weeks. The Control group received material for speaking skills that lacked photos and movies using traditional teaching methods (i.e., oral topic-based and teacher-fronted) for the same amount of time as the treatment group. Two picture descriptions were used as pre-test and post-test to evaluate students' level of speaking skills. To perform statistical analysis, paired samples t-tests and independent samples t-tests were run. The results showed that the treatment group outperformed the control group on speaking skills. In order to benefit from the positive effect of visual materials on speaking skills, instructors should spend more time on teaching students how to use them, not just familiarizing learners with visual materials. These findings offer practical and theoretical implications for using visual materials in the EFL context.