A Case Study of StudentCentered English Speaking l Practice for University Students in Korea

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of studentcentered speaking practice on speaking proficiency. The other purpose is to explore students’ views on studentcentered speaking instruction on speaking habits and their learning strategies. In this study, thirty university students participated in a practical English course over a period of 13 weeks which focused on oral presentation. The students were required to give a presentation about their own topic for 15 minutes as a speaking test. During the course, audio and visual materials, especially TED Talks were provided as material to improve learners’ oral competence. In order to measure the change of learners’ English speaking competence, a pre and posttest, survey and interview were administrated. The results revealed that the learnercentered speaking instructions were beneficial for t h e students improving oral proficiency and helping them form positive speaking strategies. The findings suggests that learnercentered speaking instruction can potentially enhance second language learners’ learning strategies in terms of both providing challenges and reducing learning anxiety through teacher support and carefully designed feedback. Based on the results, a number of pedagogical suggestions are also provided

STEM Journal, Vol 18, No 2, 2017

l A Case Study of Student-Centered English Speaking

l Practice for University Students in Korea*

Kim, Bong-Gyu

(Mokpo National University)

Kim, Bong-Gyu (2017) A case study of student-centered English speaking

practice for university students in Korea STEM Journal, 18(2), 95-112.

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of student-centered speaking practice

on speaking proficiency The other purpose is to explore students’ views on studentcentered speaking instruction on speaking habits and their learning strategies

In this study, thirty university students participated in a practical English course over

a period of 13 weeks which focused on oral presentation The students were required

to give a presentation about their own topic for 15 minutes as a speaking test During the course, audio and visual materials, especially TED Talks were provided as material

to improve learners’ oral competence In order to measure the change of learners’ English speaking competence, a pre- and post-test, survey and interview were administrated The results revealed that the learner-centered speaking instructions were beneficial for t h e students improving oral proficiency and helping them form positive speaking strategies The findings suggests that learner-centered speaking instruction can potentially enhance second language learners’ learning strategies in terms of both providing challenges and reducing learning anxiety through teacher support and carefully designed feedback Based on the results, a number of pedagogical suggestions are also provided

I INTRODUCTION

Challenges for second language learners of university students, building confidence in speaking can be one of the most difficult tasks simply because of the insufficient amount

of communicative experiences in their foreign language learning environment According

to Nunan (2003), in order to foster learners’ speaking competence, a number of language competences should be trained and equipped with producing clear sound patterns,

* This paper was supported by Research Funds of Mokpo National University in 2015

sentence stress, intonation patterns, utilizing appropriate lexical items related to a subject matter, and arranging ideas and opinions in logical sequence with an adequate fluency As

an initial stage of speaking practice, reading aloud activity can be recommended by letting students integrate both productive and receptive skills with an interesting topic (Thornbury, 2005)

However, the traditional teaching approach of speaking instruction in Korean speaking class, students frequently spend time focus on drills and memorization of linguistic elements rather than being engaged in communicative interactions containing speech acts, language functions, and discourse situations (Harmer, 2001) Therefore, we can assume that effective teaching strategies of oral competence may require students not only to engage with cognitive but to experience social dimensions of language context This may need to have a number of pedagogical factors such as appropriate teaching materials, teaching techniques, assessment procedure, and so forth In order to motivate students and

to have less speech anxiety and more confidence in speaking environment, there may be a need to construct a comfortable and learner-centered approach to speaking activities which are prepared by a teacher who is willing to share responsibilities and authorities for effective learning This study is significant for teachers in terms of reflecting teaching style and students’ speaking preference and strategies

The purpose of this study is to examine how participating oral presentation activity enhances the level of speaking proficiency of Korean speakers of English and examines how the oral presentation practices affects the learners’ speaking strategies and their efficacy through the survey The present study is aim to explore other development to oral presentation activity conducted in this study in order to suggest and further pedagogical implications in fostering speaking competence of the learners

II LITERATURE REVIEW

1 Learner-Centered Approach in Oral Presentation Activity

In the traditional teaching approach of speaking instruction, learners are usually characterized as passive and inactive with being less autonomous, especially in classroom interactions (Thornbury, 2005) According to Savignon (2001), the notion of learner-centered approach (LCA) was introduced by the constructivists Vygotsky (1978), suggesting that learning can be accomplished better in terms of constructing learners’ knowledge through meaningful interactions rather than transmitting and memorizing a newly acquired knowledge

In the learner-centered speaking instruction, students’ roles and responsibilities should

be explicit in order to achieve their goals of participating communicative instructions Their learning experiences should be valued for future involvement of the interactions In addition, learners’ collaborations in completing tasks should be encouraged with controlled and facilitated teachers’ guidance and scaffoldings (Holmes, 2004) Students’ presentation activity can be regarded as one of the most effective classroom activities which can foster learners’ speaking competence Different forms of oral presentations

have been used as a way of speaking assessment in classroom situations such as Recitation,

Show and Tell, Telling short stories, Riddles, and Three minutes speech

According to Brown (2001), there are a number of different types of classroom activities

to develop oral presentation skills based on the structure, the formality, and the purpose of the oral presentation

Imitative activity: practicing linguistic elements like ‘stress’ and ‘pitch patterns’

Responsive activity: responding to a question with a short answer

Transactional activity: exchanging relevant information for the specific purposes Interpersonal activity: maintaining a social relationships

Extensive activity: delivering topic based knowledge for the target audience

Zitouni (2013) suggested that these types of oral presentation activities can be a challenging task for most second language learners since learners are required to develop confidence and skills to speak to an audience about a certain topic in an appropriate spoken manner In most oral presentation activities, students are asked to deliver certain information on various ranges of topics within a limited time frame, either individually or

in group participation The presentation comes with an audio or visual support system in order to draw more attentions from the audience Zitouni (2013) illustrated a number of essential elements of successful oral presentation such as structured planning of the structure of the presentation, selecting relevant contents on the topic, and developing excellent communicative competence, which provided suitable computer-technologies on the presentation, and introducing audience participation during the presentation

In oral presentation activity, learners become the center of their own learning, as they are required to select own topics, and train themselves to work in collaborations with other peers throughout each activity The students have a more active role and become more responsible by participating oral and communicative work Therefore, a more learner-centered support and guidance system should be required in order to help students to decide what and how they learn in their speaking engagement (Nunan, 1989)

Many researchers have tried to introduce many ways of shifting from teacher-centered

to student-centered instructions, especially in the classroom situations Cooper and Robinson (2000) showed a few informal cooperative learning formations which can be applied into a foreign language class For instance:

TABLE 1

Student-Centered Cooperative and Instructional Structure of the Class

Think-Pair-Share Asking students to think individually & turning to other

colleagues and share ideas (Lynam, 1981) Round a table Sharing participants’ answers in a group work Minute papers Raising issues related to the content of the lecture

(Angelo & Cross, 1993; Stead, 2005) Immediate Feedback Providing immediate feedback through question (Allen

& Tanner, 2005; Fies & Marshall, 2006) Student-presentation and

projects

Assigning projects or reports to encourage students to engage in explorations of the course Learning cycle instructional

approach

Providing a sequence of question related to a given topic in a class (Harb, Durrant, & Terry, 1993) Peer-led Team Learning Facilitating cooperative learning projects

(Ebert-May & Allred, 1997) The role of a teacher in preparing of each presentation activity, there are a number of features to be considered in order to for students to produce meaningful sentences in different contexts First, more opportunities of speaking should be provided for students, rather than being dominated by a teacher (Kim, 2000) Second, appropriate materials should be suggested for learners to be able to generate more topic related contents in the story Third, by encouraging learners to participate communicative activities, the student needs to find out how to reduce emotional stress in their speaking performance (Park, 2006) Also, teaching both phonological and phonetic knowledge may be a useful strategy

to illustrate the structure of English sound system for second language learners (Suh, 2007) During the speaking activity, teachers should be seen as facilitator and guide rather than being an authority figure providing the source of knowledge (Jones, 2007) For learners’ better performance, teachers should provide more opportunities for real-world-type discourse and relevant lexical items which can be used by students in speaking situations Another important role of teachers when teaching speaking skills would be a ‘feedback giver’ who can provide both positive and negative feedback on the student’s progress, which may directly affect learners’ future outcomes (Nunan, 1989) Specific feedback provides student with details to how they may improve their form of language use for future performance

One of the most frequently used video materials containing spoken discourse would be TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design), “Ideas Worth Spreading”, for both teachers and language learners as valuable resources According to Sung (2014), by watching TED Talks, learners were able to improve their listening comprehension skills as well as understanding how to interact with the audience Various films and TV drams can also be effectively used to integrate learners’ four skills of language both in and out of the classroom situation (Kim, 2013; Seo, 2012)

2 Audio-Video Based Speaking Practice

An audio-video based speaking practice aims to integrate viewing, listening, and speaking into the learners’ practical speaking situation Through integrated engagement, students would improve their listening, and speaking abilities as well as their comprehension of the target context With the acceleration of globalization and widespread of technology based mass media in the English language, the style of teaching methodologies have been rapidly changed and have now adopted a new models of computer-assisted language learning and teaching, especially in English speaking classes

In the audio-video based speaking classes, students are trained to acquire the target language through engaging in communicative interactions with the teacher and other peers

in various tasks and activities According to Bachman (1990), the channel of auditory and visual is closely related to the psycho-physiological mechanism of language use for the production of language itself in situational communication The linguistic knowledge is stimulated through the communicative interaction in order to be a meaningful message in the language use context

The main characteristics of audio-video based teaching techniques can successfully be achieved by fostering learners’ communicative language abilities as there are a number of common features shared with in two different approaches such as meaning focused, interaction with four language skills in various contexts, and participating in target tasks (Canale & Swain, 1980) Consistently, Lu, Huang, and Sun (2008) investigated the effectiveness of audio-video based speaking activity for second language learners In their study, the approach was proved to be positive in fostering learners’ listening and speaking competence with other language proficiency In addition, the roles of the teachers were significant elements of encouraging learners to be engaged in speaking tasks Besides this finding, it was found that a specific language patterns were effectively utilized in the oral presentation activity with both paired dialogues and group discussion activity

3 Research Questions

These previous issues lead to the two following research questions that will be investigated in the present study:

1 Does the learner-centered speaking activity affect learners’ speaking competence?

2 What are the effects of the learner-centered speaking activity, presentation, on learners’ speaking strategies?

III METHODOLOGY

1 Participants

This study was conducted in a course of speech and presentation with 30 undergraduate students for 13 weeks The course solely focuses on teaching and learning speaking skills

in order to foster learners’ oral competence Students in third and fourth year participated

in this study using an audio and video material, mainly TED Talks, both in and out of the class to practice and to monitor their own speaking progress

The participants were required to submit the result of the TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) as an evidence of language proficiency Students TOEIC results ranged between 400 and 800 None of students had an official score of TOEIC speaking test Therefore, their levels of English speaking were measured by both a researcher and a native speaker teacher Before starting the course, students were required

to read a reading passage to check their fluency and pronunciation in order to be checked and graded by a native speaker of English teacher The speech was recorded in the class and marked based on this teacher’s judgment The mean scores were 2.5 out of 5 for English speaking ability The score suggested that the average speaking ability of students was between low-intermediate and mid-intermediate level

2 Procedure

Participants took the pre-oral test consisted of an oral text-reading and also an

‘introduction of myself’ before starting learner-centered speaking activities In addition, the pre-survey on speaking strategies in second language learning was conducted at the beginning of the semester to find out learners’ speaking strategies

As a first step to the speaking activity, TED Talk web-site was used in order to search for a topic that interests the student for the presentation Students were required to present their selected topic (or theme) from the TED Talk for the mid and final presentation for three-four minutes Also for thirteen weeks, students-centered oral activities were prepared and operated in order to foster students’ speaking competence and maximize their motivations on learning speaking

The questionnaire was designed and implemented to explore the participants’ perceptions of learner-centered speaking practice The questionnaire used five Likert scale ranging from 1 to 5, and was conducted in both the initial and the final stage of the research The survey consisted of five categories: speaking strategies, satisfaction with speaking materials and oral activities conducted in and out of classroom, self-efficacy, and views

on the teacher’s roles Both close and open-ended questions were prepared in order to

encourage students to evaluate the effects of student-centered oral activities on learners’ not only linguistic but psychological aspects of language learning

In order to assess learners’ speaking competence, both pre and post-test were conducted based on the evaluation rubric of the TEEP (Test in English for Educational Purposes) Weir (1993) designed and categorized the speaking evaluation rubric into five main items such as appropriateness, grammatical clarity, fluency, and content appropriateness The format had been reformulated in order to fit the research by the researcher before the assessment started Reformulated categories indicating the quality of presentation were redeveloped in order to check the level of the learners’ speaking skills: comprehension, fluency, pronunciation, body-gesture, interactions with audience, preparation of speaking, accuracy Each item was ranged from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent), making a total score of 40

3 Student-Centered Instructional Structure of the Speaking Class

In order to make the student-centered speaking instruction, a number of features from previous studies were considered and modified according to the research circumstance First of all, in order to create a student-centered speaking environment, students were provided with an environment in which they could discuss and share their experiences when the speaking activities were conducted These problems could be solved with teachers’ support and guidance through interaction of individual or group activities By assigning individual speaking presentation on the TED Talks, teachers have created an educational structure that can provide a series of corrective feedback on speaking related problems and difficulties For the psychological stabilization of learners’ speaking activities, leadership of the classroom was shared with students as well as sufficient teacher support provided (Rogers & Freiberg, 1994)

TABLE 2

Student-Centered English Speaking Instructional Structure of the Class

Think & share Asking students to think about any problems faced in

terms of practicing speaking presentation with other peers

Round a table Sharing participants’ experience through both an

individual and a group work Facilitating problem-based

learning (PBL)

Raising issues related to the mistakes and errors students experienced in the classroom

Corrective feedback Providing immediate feedback through exchanging ideas

and instructional suggestions regarding speech habits Student-presentation based

speaking practice

Assigning individual speech projects to lead students to

be involved in explorations of speaking environments Interactive & Instructional

learning

Providing a sequence of problems to be solved through learners’ discussions

Student-centered learning Facilitating cooperative learning between peers

Classroom management Shared leadership with a teacher’s guided support Psychological aspect Intrinsic motivation & reflective and self assessment Facilitated discovery through

negotiations

Experience based structuring for students & constant stimulating negotiations with members of the classroom

4 Material

The learners were required to make a speech presentation using audio-visual materials,

based on TED Talks in order for students to practice listening and speaking skills During

the first stage of the course, students selected personally interesting topics and checked the pronunciation of native speakers and the speed of speech Students also checked whether the use of spoken style and vocabulary was not too difficult compared to their level Using the selected data, students practiced speaking for 13 weeks Based on the script of the TED Talks, students prepared memorizing the content of the materials in order to be able to convey the message of the presentation

5 Data Analysis

To measure learners’ speaking competence, both a pre-test and a post-test were conducted and spoken data were collected based on Weir (1993)’s modified evaluation rubric The results of speaking test were analyzed through the statistical analysis of SPSS

21 In addition, a pre-survey and a post survey on the learners’ cognitive and meta-cognitive speaking strategy use and psychological approach of speaking activity were designed and conducted to find out the effectiveness of speaking instruction 5-point Likert scales were used with open-ended questions The results of the survey were collected and analyzed with the use of SPSS 21 version in order to show the frequency and its reliability

of the question items The result of students’ proficiency test was obtained by using the

paired t-test analysis

IV RESULTS

1 Oral Presentation Performance

As mentioned in the methodology section, students participated in oral presentation activity with the support of the teacher’s support for 14 weeks After engagement in a number of student-centered speaking activities, students were required to present their topic for about 15minuties They were also asked to fill out the questionnaire regarding

the speaking strategies, reflections of the speaking activities, and their attitude in oral presentation activity Overall score of the oral performance of each student was analyzed

as well as conducting a survey

<Table 3> to <Table 4> illustrates the descriptive statistics on student-centered oral presentation activities in second language learning situations It shows that there was an

increase between pre-test and post-test [t (df = 29) = 17.53, p < 001)], a high value of the

coefficient (r = 886, p = 000) This result represents that student-centered speaking activity had a number of significant factors to improve the learners’ levels of speaking proficiency

TABLE 3

Descriptive Statistics for the Effectivenss on Speaking Improvement

TABLE 4

Correlation Analysis

2 Effects of Oral Presentation Activity on Speaking Strategies

<Table 5> shows student change in emotions after the learner-centered English speaking activities First, the students’ preference for speaking learning increased from 13.4% to 61.4%, as confidence in speaking activities improved from 30% to 83.3% Second, 66.7% of students showed positive attitude in comparison with other languages But more than 40% of students showed a neutral attitude, which indicates that it may not

be easy to change emotional interest on speaking skill Also, 93.3% of students hoped to improve their speaking ability However, in spontaneous participation through speech presentation activities, 43.3% of the negative opinions and 23.3% of the neutral attitudes indicated that more courage should be needed to participate in learning speaking In particular, in terms of lacking of self-confidence in conversation with foreigners, it showed that 40% of students’ attitude increased positively and negative comments also decreased from 83.3% to 23% However, the results illustrated reinforcing confidence in speech activities can be a difficult as 40% of the students’ response were neutral

TABLE 5

The Change of Learners’ Strategies Through Speaking Instructions

Psychological aspect of

speaking presentation

1 Strongly disagree 2 Disagree 3 Neutral 4 Agree 5 Strongly agree

pre post pre post pre post pre post pre post Preference of

speaking activity

2 (6.7%)

0 (0%)

16 (53.3%)

1 (3.3%)

8 (26.7%)

10 (33.3%)

2 (6.7%)

14 (46.7%)

2 (6.7%)

5 (16.7%) Building up confidence

through speaking

(16.7%) (0%) (43.3%) (3.3%) (30%) (13.3%) (30%) (50%) (0%) (33.3%) Interest in speaking

compared to other skills

(16.7%) (3.3%) (43.3%) (10%) (23.3%) (40%) (16.7%) (30%) (0%) (16.7%) Wish to improve speaking

skill

(3.3%) (0%) (10%) (0%) (30%) (6.7%) (36.7%) (40%) (20%) (53.3%) Active attitude

on speaking activity

(23.3%) (0%) (40%) (23.3%) (33.3%) (43.3%) (3.3%) (23.3%) (0%) (10%) Confidence in speaking

with native speakers

(23.3%) (0%) (60%) (23.3%) (13.3%) (36.7%) (3.3%) (36.7%) (0%) (3.3%)

<Table 6> shows the students’ changes in the speech learning strategies through the speaking activities Negative opinions about learning with other peers fell from 83.4% to 43.3% However, 33.3% of the students are still burdened with exposure to their speaking skills and speaking mistakes by showing neutral opinions With regard to the students seeking from others’ in speaking practice, 46.6% of the negative comments were changed

to more than 50% positive comments after the speech presentation activity However, more than 40% of students seemed worried about requests for help and the errors they may make during the English presentation In particular, more than 80% of students showed difficulty in correcting errors before the activity but the negative comments decreased to 46.7% More than 80% of the students in the monitoring of their own mistakes expressed the necessity of correcting their errors while engaged speaking activity

As for the feedback sharing with colleagues, 70% of the negative comments decreased

to 23.3% However, 33.3% of the respondents and 23.3% of the negative opinions showed that the role of the teacher is important in order for students to maintain cooperative activities The use of the TED Talk’s video data is more than 80% positive in the sense of engagement to the topic related to context In addition, regarding the activity of recording their own voice for practice, over 60% of the students were positive and more than 80%

of the students were able to practice pronunciation on their own Therefore, 86.6% of the students showed the improvement about the speaking learning strategy However, 26.7%

of the respondents expressed negative opinions, which shows their difficulty in changing speaking habits Finally, more than 80% of the respondents seemed to become conscious

of the audience through the practice of speaking, compared to 73.3% of the negative opinions before the speaking activity 93.3% of the students thought that the English presentation activities should be included in the English curriculum