Empowering Learners: Online Radio Broadcasts to Enhance the Students’ Speaking Skills

doi:10.7176/jep/12-32-01

Abstract

The speaking skill is one of the most challenging skills to develop in the Content and Language Integrated Learning Classroom (CLIL) since it requires the student to have enough confidence and language proficiency to communicate their ideas and opinions about a topic effectively. Noticeably, students lack opportunities to talk in the classroom and use the language. As a result, the student doesn’t experience the language nor improve their oral skills. Therefore, it is imperative that schools take into consideration the use of ITC resources, such as online radio sources, because they might be useful tools wherein students can participate actively and enhance their speaking skills vastly. A quasi-experimental study was carried out in an Ecuadorian High school. The objective of this study was to measure the influence of critical thinking interviews during an online radio broadcast transmission on the students’ oral skills. 10 th graders studying Social Studies were assigned to this study. From this group, 10 students were part of the treatment group and 10 in the control group. Treatment participants were interviewed in pairs four (4) hours per week for two months on questions related to the social studies topics such as culture, gender, human rights, ethnicity, and others during the radio broadcast transmission in the English language. Data was collected by means of a speaking pre-test and post-test based on a rubric measuring four parameters: Grammar, Vocabulary, Pronunciation, and Fluency. Results were processed through SPSS software and analyzed based on the literature review. Findings demonstrated that there was a significant and positive impact on the treatment participants’ speaking skills. Keywords: online radio broadcast, communicative skills, critical thinking interview, learning autonomy, English speaking context. DOI: 10.7176/JEP/12-32-01 Publication date: November 30 th 2021

Highlights

Application of the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach has increased worldwide based on the necessity of using the English language to talk about diverse topics
The main goal of this study is to provide an innovative way to expose students to the foreign language communication in real contexts to improve the speaking skills
Treatment participants were interviewed in pairs four (4) hours per week for two months in a radio program on questions related to the social studies topics such as culture, gender, human rights, ethnicity, and others during the radio broadcast transmission in the English language

Summary

Introduction

Application of the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach has increased worldwide based on the necessity of using the English language to talk about diverse topics. Most students have low language proficiency due to the lack of opportunities to interact in the classroom. Calle et al (2012) some relevant findings on foreign language proficiency level are described. These researchers tried to identify the reasons for the low English literacy performance of graduating high school students. A total of 168 English language teachers participated in this study. The investigation revealed that poor English literacy performance of high school students was due to “the use of traditional teaching strategies, the deficiency of interaction among students in the target language, and the teachers misunderstanding when applying communicative strategies” The investigation revealed that poor English literacy performance of high school students was due to “the use of traditional teaching strategies, the deficiency of interaction among students in the target language, and the teachers misunderstanding when applying communicative strategies” (p. 9)

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