Abstract
By employing an action research framework, this study was designed to explore the effectiveness of a set of speaking activities centered on a children’s cartoon to improve oral performance in the EFL classroom. The participants were fourth graders of a public school in Colombia, who had low oral performance in spoken English language. The findings suggest that the proposed speaking activities were comprehensible for the students, and appropriate to the students’ proficiency level. Although to maximize learners’ opportunities to speak in the classroom, teachers should design activities that provide chances to talk in English. Thus students will be engaged to participate in the classroom. Also, most of the students were comfortable speaking during the activities since they were familiar with watching cartoons, thus being at ease with certain topics can help students exchange ideas in class. The most important recommendation is to avoid translating instruction into students’ mother tongue for the purpose to familiarize students with the target language.
Highlights
Based on our teaching experience as an English teacher at the school level, we have noticed some repetitive behavior inside the English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom
By employing an action research framework, this study was designed to explore the effectiveness of a set of speaking activities centered on a children’s cartoon to improve oral performance in the EFL classroom
Most of the students were comfortable speaking during the activities since they were familiar with watching cartoons, being at ease with certain topics can help students exchange ideas in class
Summary
Based on our teaching experience as an English teacher at the school level, we have noticed some repetitive behavior inside the English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom. Students tend to have low participation in the classes and oral practice has been a daunting challenge for language teachers. In Colombia, which is the location for this study, English is taught in elementary and secondary education. Even though English is becoming an essential subject in students’ education, students do not seem to use the foreign language outside of the classroom, which reflects on their low performance and lack of motivation to participate in English classroom activities
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have