The Effectiveness of Outdoor Learning on First year English majored Students’ Speaking skill at Dong Nai Technology University

Abstract

Cultivating students’ speaking ability is considered as one of the most important objectives of the English teaching process. In order to develop English communication skill, students need an appropriate learning environment. Indeed, applying outdoor learning is an effective way to improve language proficiency. Therefore, this study was conducted to 1) identify whether or not outdoor learning can increase students’ speaking ability, and 2) clarify students’ attitudes towards the application of outdoor learning in English teaching. The research employed both qualitative and quantitative methods. The participants were 45 first year English majored students from Faculty of Foreign Languages at Dong Nai Technology University in Vietnam. The results of the study showed that outdoor learning brought a lot of benefits in improving students’ speaking fluency. Moreover, the use of outdoor activities increased students’ opportunity to speak the target language by creating a positive learning atmosphere which enable students to interact in English naturally. The effectiveness can be proved by the increase of students’ motivation to learn English and master speaking skill. In fact, the students showed favorable attitudes to the implementation of outdoor learning. From the results, it can be concluded that with the assistance of appropriate outdoor activities, especially communicative activities, students could acquire the language much better.