Arab Educational Information Network

Speaking is an important language skill that have to be mastered by English learners to its significant and its use for communication. Students' speaking skill can improved by giving them enough practice, because practice gives the students opportunities to use and master the language. Effective practice can be done by conducting communicative activities and this can be applied through the activity which is called small group discussion. Therefore, the current study aimed at investigating the effect of using small group discussions, in developing student's speaking skills. The present research was conducted in the intermediate schools of Iraq during the first term of the academic year 2019-2020. The subject of the study are 50 secondary school teachers. The study has employed survey questionnaire to collect the data from the subjects. Based on the gathered data, the findings showed that the use of small group discussion has a positive effect on the students' speaking skills and can improve the students' speaking ability in terms of pronunciation, structure, vocabulary, fluency, and content. (Published abstract)