Relationship Between Writing Skill and Oral Performance of Taiwanese Students

Abstract

English is the most important foreign language in Taiwan because of globalization. Hence, receiving a satisfactory grade in English class is required to all college students before they graduate. In learning English, oral performance and knowing how to write articles and reports are used to evaluate the student’s proficiency ability. To understand this issue, this study investigated the relationship between writing skills and oral performance in a sample of 32 students who were randomly selected from a population 140 students in 2 classes. Students’ age and gender were used as independent variables while oral performance and writing skills were used as dependent variables. Regression analysis was used to measure relationship between students’ oral performance and writing scores. The regression results show that better writing skills significantly improve oral performance as the age of a student increases. Further, students coming from areas other than northern Taiwan present a negative relationship between their writing skills and oral performances. The results of this study present useful findings that inform Taiwanese teachers of English about the importance of improving writing skills on oral performance.