Investigating Impacts of Foreign Language Attrition on Iranian EFL Learners’ Speaking Skill

The phenomenon of language attrition has been identified as an important obstacle that runs counter to the process of language learning. This paper investigates whether foreign language attrition affects the levels of accuracy, fluency and complexity in speaking skills of Iranian EFL learners. In doing so, 37 English language learners within an age range of 18 to 35 were selected from intermediate and advanced levels of oral proficiency based on convenience sampling. To assess the speaking ability of the participants, an IELTS speaking mock test was administered with various topics at four different stages of the study over a period of nine months—at the beginning of the loss of contact with the language, three months, six months and nine months after the loss of contact with the language learning experience. In order to answer the research questions, a repeated-measures ANOVA was used. The first research question was concerned with the impact of attrition on the complexity level of Iranian EFL learners’ speaking skills across the four stages. The results indicated that attrition significantly affected complexity. As for accuracy, significant and meaningful differences were found across the four stages. Similarly, regarding fluency that relates to the third research question, the results suggested a significant impact of attrition on this aspect of speaking. Moreover, the results of the effect size demonstrated that attrition had the highest impact on fluency and the lowest on accuracy.