Investigating EFL Students’ Speech Accuracy and Precision with Specific Reference to Adjectives

Abstract

English occupies an important place and it is established as a language of international communication. Therefore, speaking English is undoubtedly vital nowadays since it is universally used in almost all fields of life. This study aims at investigating English as Foreign Language (EFL) students’ speech accuracy and precision with a particular reference to adjectives; specifically, it seeks to describe how the students use adjectives in their speech taking into consideration the grammar and semantics aspects. It is hypothesized that third year EFL students at the University of Mohammed Seddik Ben Yahia, Jijel, will show to a great extent grammatically incorrect use of different types of adjectives. Moreover, the study presupposes that they will manifest mostly imprecise use of adjectives in their speech. Three oral production tasks were designed and completed by the participants to examine the grammaticality and preciseness of students’ use of adjectives in spontaneous speech. After analyzing grammatically and semantically the students’ oral productions, it was found that the participants have an excellent performance in their grammatical use of adjectives. They only showed occasional incorrect use of a small number of proper and descriptive adjectives. Furthermore, the respondents showed an acceptable precision level in their use of adjectives, and their precision errors were mainly related to comparative degree of adjectives and gradable adjectives