Activities to promote speaking to improve students’ performance in the MEIF English I oral test

Abstract

Speaking is one of the productive skills that Basic English 1 students at the Universidad Veracruzana need to develop when learning the language. During the end-of-term oral test, students appear to face problems to communicate effectively. As a consequence, the teacher has to find pedagogical actions for developing such competence so that students’ oral production can be improved in the classroom and in real life. For this action research, the teacher selected a set of four speaking activities. Two were guided, and two were creative or free communication activities to help Basic English I students to cope with their end-of-term oral test. Guided activities offer practice in the accuracy of the target language; creative activities propose authentic interaction. Moreover, this research analyzed students’ perceptions towards the implemented speaking activities in the classroom. To collect data, an observational and three non-observational instruments were used; they were a checklist, an exploratory questionnaire, a questionnaire, and classroom documents (mid-term oral test, and end-of-term oral test). They were analyzed by using content analysis and the obtained information was triangulated and corroborated to provide validity and reliability to this research. The report finds that the use of speaking activities in the classroom tends to help students to cope with the end-of-term oral test, and to promote the oral competence in real life. The study suggests that students’ perceptions towards the end-of-term oral test are greatly influenced by the activities implemented in the classroom.