English Speaking Skill and Indian Undergraduate ESL Learners: Interleaving or Block Practice?

Abstract

Recent studies showed that compared to practicing language skills in A stepwise manner over a period known as block practice, mixing the units of learning, and making them less predictable by presenting them randomly to the language learners, known as interleaving, may prove to be a more effective approach to language teaching (Finkbeiner&Nicol, 2003; Schneider et al., 1998, 2002; Miles, 2014; Nakata, 2015). This paper is an attempt at reporting the findings of a 24-day long experimental study on the pedagogical effect of the interleaving and block practice approach to language learning (speaking skill in the present context) on undergraduate English as a second (ESL) learner. The teaching experimentation was done online on 36 undergraduate learner participants at the School of Sciences in Tezpur University during the Autumn Semester, 2020-21. The interleaving group showed slightly better language pedagogical results in speaking skills in English than the block practice group. It is, however, stated that the difference in performance was not found to be statistically significant. The performance of the two groups across the four micro-skills of speaking in English identified as interaction, pronunciation, fluency & coherence, and vocabulary & grammar remained static within the duration of the experimentation. Additionally, the groups did not demonstrate any significant difference in their L2 attitude and motivation over time.