Procedure
At the beginning of the study, researchers had administered a PET as a proficiency test to make
certain of the homogeneity of the students. Since they had to employ the treatment on two groups,
they assigned the participants in two groups. To ensure that two groups were homogeneous in terms
of speaking a speaking test was administered to both groups. The speaking pretest started with a twominute
interaction of candidates with the interlocutor. Each interviewee had to respond to general
questions about himself on topics such as job, family, sport, hobby, etc. during this part. Next, there
was another two-minute interaction, during which the testees had to interact on a visual stimulus.
They had to use functional language to make
and respond to suggestions, make recommendations, and negotiate agreements. By the end of Part
Two, a photograph was given to each of the candidates in turn as a verbal prompt to talk about a
particular topic. During these three minutes, the subjects‘ speaking ability was assessed through
describing photographs, managing discourse, and using appropriate vocabulary in a longer turn. All
photographs used in this part were related to the same topic. The last three-minute discussion of the
speaking part was a general conversation. The students interacted with each other in this phase on the
topic established on the theme of Part Three. Their discussion was about their opinions,
likes/dislikes, preferences, experiences, habits, etc.
The treatment consisted of 10 sessions of 60 minutes. Both groups were taught based on the same
teaching method and activities. At the beginning of each session every student had to prepare areport, when one read his report others listened to him and their teachers recast carefully. After a
student was finished, others exchanged their opinions about what they had heard and they added
their information related to the topic. The teacher provided comments on the erroneous utterances of
the students through reduction recasts in the experimental group and non-reduction recasts in the
control group during the treatment. The teacher‘s reduction recasts included reformulated phrases
shorter than the erroneous utterances produced by the learners. They were usually made up of a verb
and a content word or a combination of two words in length. The teacher used non-reduction recasts
through repetition of the reformulated error in the form of a statement, a tag question, a clarification
request, or a confirmation check. After 10 sessions instruction, the speaking posttest was administered
to both groups to track any possible improvement in their speaking ability.