Investigating Strategies to Improve English Oral Communication Skills Among Undergrads at Mehran UET, Jamshoro

Abdul Rauf Bhatti ,Zohaib Shaikh ,Shoukat Ali Lohar ,Imtiaz Ali Panhwar

doi:10.7176/jlll/79-05

Abstract

An Oral Communication (OC) plays a significant role in our day-to-day life. It has been considered as a life changing tool of the conversation. In academia,it is given a primary importance. (OC) is a two-dimensional work and it includes both listening and speaking simultaneously. This paper aims to investigate strategies, impacting students’ oral English communication performance and to make them effective and fluent speaker of English language.In this thesis, the researcher introduced many strategies to help students to improve their speaking skills of English language which actually comprises oral communication. First the study attempted to develop the questionnaire for statistical analysis named strategies for oral communication which was then classified as strategies for speaking skills. There were nine strategies of speaking. The research project was based on close-ended questionnaire for speaking and composed in a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 strongly agree (SA) 2 agree (A) 3 Neutral (N) 4 strongly disagree (SD) 5 disagree (D).The target population for this study were the 132 students of Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, Jamshoro, Sindh. The research contains sequential mixed method for the collection of data that is based on both quantitative data, that was collected from students through questionnaire and the qualitative data that was collected from 5 English language teachers of MUET, Jamshoro. The data was analyzed in grand percentage, mean and standard deviations. To validate the use of the instrument, participant reports on the Strategy for oral communication were compared with the result of the OCS. It was revealed that students with high or low oral proﬁciency tended to use these particular strategies, such as social affective strategies, ﬂuency-oriented strategies, negotiation of meaning and etc.Some of these strategies can directly influence their effectiveness of learning communication skills of English, but some do not have direct influence on oralcommunication skills of English. Understanding these strategies and their impact would enable both instructors and students to improve their teaching, learning environment as well as methodology. Keywords: Communication Strategies, survey research (sequential mixed method), speaking skills, high proficiency, and low proficiency. Investigating Strategies to improve English oral Communication skills among undergrads at Mehran UET, Jamshoro DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/79-05 Publication date: May 31 st 2021

Highlights

English language has been made a major lingua franca of the world and it has introduced teaching of English in most of the marginalized countries including Pakistan (Philipson, 1992)
47.0% of the participants have agreed with the idea that they do focus on their pronunciation as to better their communication process.The given table discusses the results of the flow of the conversation in fluency oriented strategy
53.0% of the participants have agreed on the idea that they do change their method of conveying the idea when they think that listeners feel uncomfortable while understanding the message.The given table shows that 50.8% of the respondents strongly agreed that they think for a while before uttering anything that they want to say

Summary

Introduction

English language has been made a major lingua franca of the world and it has introduced teaching of English in most of the marginalized countries including Pakistan (Philipson, 1992) In this globalized world it is undeniable that the communicative approach plays a vital role in the teachings of language in the context where English is perceived as a second language and the ultimate goal of language teaching is to improve the CC (communicative competence) of the language learners. In Pakistani contexts English is used as a second and foreign language and its learning is made compulsory for adult students in today’s world In this regard, there are thousands of institutes which are offering ELT courses within different duration but most of these institutes focus on OCS (Oral Communication Strategies). They need to consider the factors that create hurdles for learners to speak fluently in a target language

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