Speaking Performance Research Articles

The impact of rater training on rater reliability in an English oral test

Speaking skill assessment is gaining great interest in the field of assessment nowadays. Literature has highlighted reliability of raters in rating a speaking performance as one of the challenges due to human’s subjective nature. This study has attempted to explore the influence of rater training on rater reliability in the assessment of a spoken task. A qualitative research design was used and, semi-structured interview was employed to obtain data for this study. A total of 21 secondary school teachers participated in the study. They were raters trained to assess an oral English interaction test. Data were analyzed using thematic content analysis which resulted in three main categories i.e. importance of rater training, effects of rater training on rater reliability, and improvement of rater training. The results show that rater training is essential before any rating is to be done, and its effects include, among others, maintaining rating consistency, exposure to test task, and criteria for grading. While suggestions to improve rater training sessions are related to the length, frequency, and quality of training.

Investigation of Factors Influencing Speaking Performance of Saudi EFL Learners

Equal focus needs be placed on teaching all four basic skills of language learning: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. However, it is observed that due attention is not devoted to developing speaking skills in Saudi EFL learners; this task is especially challenging as English is not widely used or spoken in their day-to-day communication. The current study aims to investigate the psychological factors which affect learners’ speaking performance by: (a) examining the strategies learners use for developing speaking skills, (b) identifying obstacles confronted by learners in developing speaking skills, and (c) suggesting ways to facilitate the acquisition of English speaking skills. The research seeks answers to these questions: (1) What are some psychological factors affecting speaking skills of students? (2) Why do learners find speaking in English so difficult? . I distributed a questionnaire among 200 female and male participants majoring in various fields at Majmaah university in Saudi Arabia. I employed SPSS to analyze the accumulated data and displayed the results in descriptive tables. The results reveal that affective factors impacting students’ performance in speaking skills are shyness, peer pressure, anxiety, and fear of making mistakes. Other factors that hinder speaking performance are paucity of necessary vocabulary, lack of exposure to the target language, and scarce opportunities to practice speaking outside the classroom. The study contributes to the existing English language learning (ELL) literature through its focus on the affective factors impacting speaking performance in Arabic-speaking EFL learners.

Analysing teacher’s feedback used by an English teacher of EFL in senior high school

This research reports an analysis of giving feedback from the teacher to the students after showing their speaking performance in the classroom. Data were collected from a teacher and six students through interviews and documentation. These six students are chosen from the high, medium, and low level based on their score and their performance in the class. Data analysis discovered that the teacher concern with giving explicit, clarification requests, elicitation, and repetition feedback. In giving feedback the teacher focused to correct how they pronounce the words and how they arrange the sentence grammatically. In addition, giving online feedback has several benefits for both the teacher and the learner. For the teacher giving feedback can tell the teacher how about students' minds. Knowing the students' minds will help the teacher to choose the style in teaching. Then for the students, getting feedback also give them many benefits. These are: Students can communicate more with the teacher, students will be more confident, students will be more motivated to speak English, a student can realize their mistake, students can revise the mistake, a student can decrease their mistakes, then a student can develop their speaking.

Relationships between Comprehension, Strategic Behaviours and Content-Related Aspects of Test Performances in Integrated Speaking Tasks

ABSTRACT The use of integrated tasks to test English-speaking skills raises questions about the impact of comprehension on test score outcomes, and the impact of stimulus materials on test-taker strategic behaviours. This study analysed speaking performances and verbal report data to examine the strategies used by test takers at different levels of proficiency to relate stimulus text information in response to a TOEFL-iBT reading-listening-speaking task. One-hundred twenty speaking performances were analysed to identify how ideas from reading and listening source texts were reproduced, summarised and/or synthesised. Verbal reports from 38 test takers were also collected. Findings showed that test takers, regardless of proficiency, reproduced more single ideas from stimulus texts than summarised or synthesised information, although high proficiency test-takers summarised information more than low proficiency test takers. Verbal report data further revealed that high proficiency test-takers engage in effective summarisation and synthesising as part of note-taking while reading and listening, suggesting these are aspects of integrated speaking task constructs and supporting the relevance of integrated tasks for assessing entry to tertiary educational domains.

Relationship between Second Language Deep Vocabulary Knowledge and Speaking Performance: Mediation of Task Type

Most of the models accounting for L2 oral production have deemed a significant role for vocabulary knowledge in this process. Previous studies have demonstrated a positive relationship between different aspects of lexical knowledge and performance or proficiency of second language skills including the speaking performance. Meanwhile, the findings have suggested a determining role for the task type used for measuring speaking performance when one or more aspects of lexical knowledge are in focus. This study was conducted to investigate the relationship between the EFL Learners’ deep vocabulary knowledge (DVK) and speaking performance by scrutinizing the mediating role of task type. To this end, 102 bachelor ELT students were given Word Associate Test to measure their DVK, and a planned presentation task and unplanned tasks of description, narration and reasoning to elicit speaking performance. The elicited samples of speaking performance were transcribed and analyzed in terms of fluency, accuracy, lexical complexity and grammatical complexity. Structural equation modeling indicated a lack of causal relationship between DVK and aspects of speaking performance as measured with both planned and unplanned tasks. However, mixed results were obtained in the case of the correlations of fluency, accuracy, grammatical complexity and lexical complexity with DVK across different tasks. Although the findings do not provide evidence for a strong relationship between DVK and speaking performance when DVK is analyzed in isolation from other aspects of vocabulary knowledge, the variation witnessed in findings provide further proof for the importance of task effectiveness in the study of lexical access.

Mini-seminar project: An authentic assessment practice in speaking class for advanced students

This paper reports one best-practice in assessing the public speaking performance of advanced students at an Indonesian public university. The study involves an English course for an advanced class which was primarily related to public speaking skills. Considering that speaking is a productive skill that should be assessed through authentic assessment principles, the lecturers decided to assign the students with a mini-seminar project as part of their final examination. This project required the students to conduct a real-life contextualised seminar in which the organisers, speakers, and audience are composed of the students themselves. This paper discusses the rationale behind the planning and implementation of this successful project which involved a synthesis of assessment of, for, and as learning and critically evaluates the procedures of the assessment, the rubric developed therein, and the challenges experienced by the lecturers within the classroom. After the implementation, it can be concluded that this mini-seminar project as a doable alternative authentic assessment model that is applcable in a speaking class which focuses on the development of students’ public speaking skills. This mini-seminar project is recommended not only because it can be used as an alternative assessment model, but also it encourages students to work together in teams, and encourage them to work creatively, create something new in order to perform better.

Lower Secondary Students’ Arabic Speaking Anxiety: A Foreign Language Literacy Perspective

Speaking in a foreign language classroom can be extremely anxiety-provoking for some students. There are many studies on foreign language anxiety (FLA). The studies show that anxiety influences achievement and performance in speaking. However, most of the previous studies have investigated FLA in English-speaking contexts. Hence, this study aims to investigate speaking anxiety among Arabic Language learners in secondary schools from the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The students (n=40) were selected following the random sampling method. The established questionnaire of Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) developed by Horwitz et al. (1986) was used for collecting the data. This questionnaire consists of four factors namely test anxiety, communication apprehension, anxiety in the classroom and fear of negative evaluation. The researcher followed descriptive statistical methods including means and standard deviation values to address the research questions. The study shows that the process of learning the Arabic Language has significant impact on students in learning a foreign language, especially in daily secondary schools. The findings show several concerns exist among the students while speaking Arabic in the classroom. The results can help Arabic Language teachers to understand students’ anxiety in the process of teaching the language in the daily/non-boarding secondary schools which will contribute to literacy of Arabic Language at large.

Higher anxiety rating does not mean poor speech performance: dissociation of the neural mechanisms of anticipation and delivery of public speaking.

Public speaking anxiety refers to feelings of nervousness when anticipating or delivering a speech. However, the relationship between anxiety in the anticipation phase and speech delivery phase is unclear. In this study, we used functional near-infrared spectroscopy to record participants' brain activities when they were anticipating or performing public speaking tasks in an immersive virtual reality environment. Neuroimaging results showed that participants' subjective ratings of public anxiety in the anticipation phase but not the delivery phase were correlated with activities in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the inferior frontal gyrus, and the precentral and postcentral gyrus. In contrast, their speaking performance could be predicted by activities in the temporal gyrus and the right postcentral gyrus in the delivery phase. This suggests a dissociation in the neural mechanisms between anxiety in preparation and execution of a speech. The conventional anxiety questionnaire is a good predictor of anticipatory anxiety, but cannot predict speaking performance. Using virtual reality to establish a situational test could be a better approach to assess in vivo public speaking performance.

FUNCTIONS OF SPEAKING IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE & SPEAKING ANXIETY

Plato once said “a wise man speaks because he has something to say, a fool speaks because he has to say something!” Often the ability to speak (or not) is used to gauge a person’s language proficiency. Speaking is one of the four language skills which includes listening, reading and writing. However, of all the four skills, the first skill that is portrayed is a person’s speaking skills. A person’s speaking skills (or lack of it) is often used by future employers to evaluate the oral communication abilities of their employees. This is because speaking has many different functions and failure to understand the varying functions may lead to anxiety among the speakers. This pilot study is done to investigate the usage of the English language in undergraduates’ interaction and transaction in their everyday lives, their speaking performances and their speaking anxiety. Data is analysed using SPSS and presented in the form of mean scores. Findings for interaction and transaction showed that English is used during formal transaction. In addition to that, the discussion on academic matters is a necessity to speak English. Next, findings for performance revealed that no matter how good or poor their achievement in this second language, speakers have to make it happen – this is one of the challenges that the speakers have to face. Lastly, the speaking anxiety may impact their (speakers) interaction with other people. Results of this study bear interesting implications towards the acquisition and learning of speaking in English among learners. 
 
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The Graphic Organizers (GOs) in the Development of Communicative Skills in Class Presentation

<em>This study aims at uncovering on how a language skill could properly be embedded to import another skill’s impact. The effectiveness of GOs with patterned structures and their functions can facilitate English spoken proficiency in class presentation. In order to obtain the formulated research purpose, non-participation observation had been carried out in support with video-recording. The positive effectiveness of GOs could be varying towards certain English proficiency levels; however, the negative impacts produced by the elementary learners indicate the psychological problems and the technical problems. GOs could worthily be as recommended ELL media, since they can effectively stimulate EFL intermediate learners’ intrinsic elements of learning achievement. Those therefore could effectively scaffold the intermediate learners through questioning technique in form of guided-Graphic Organizers (GOs). GOs could dynamically be incorporated into multimodal ways; by re-writing, chronological overview, and note-taking which would be employed by the upper intermediate learners. There are three situations which must be required for advanced learners; experiences-associated learning, topic-based selection, and the comprehensive understanding of GOs concepts and the topics of reading passages. Thereby, GOs can be regarded as marvelous strategies that can positively contribute to induce EFL learners’ psychological achievements and effectively promote English speaking performance.</em>

The EFFECT OF USING SILENT WAY METHOD TOWARD THE STUDENTS’ SPEAKING PERFORMANCE

In English there are four skills that should be mastered, they are listening, speaking, reading and writing. Speaking is a form of communication and basic skill that must be mastered by students since it is very important for them to communicate. Besides, also help student able to propose brainchild and feeling. In speaking, students should have the teacher who teaches with attractive method, in order they interest in studying. If they interest in studying, so the teacher easy to improve their speaking performance. Based on the observation, the researcher found that the students’ speaking performance were low. There are 4 problems in this research, from identification the researcher focused and emphasize the problem as follow : (1) The students have no confidence in speaking English. (2) The students afraid of speaking English. (3) The students cant’ meet minimum requirement. (4) The method that use is not interesting.
 In this research, the researcher focused on the students speaking performance. By knowing the weakness of students in speaking performance, the researcher can help the students to increase their speaking performance. In this case using silent way method is one of method that can be used in learning speaking. The objectives of this research are to know the effect silent way method toward the students’ speaking performance and to know how far the strength of effect of silent way method toward the students speaking performance. The population of this research was the students eight grade at SMP N 9 Metro, consist of 150 students. The researcher used cluster random sampling technique in making the sample. The sample were 30 students that was divided in two classes. The first class was experimental class and the second was control class. In experimental class the researcher did treatments, it has done in three meeting treatments.
 The data was analyzed by using formula t test. From the result and discussion it is proved that there is an effect of silent way method in learning speaking. So, the teacher needs to introduce to the students about silent way method in order to the students successful in speaking.

PRONUNCIATION ERRORS IN STUDENTS ENGLISH-SPEAKING PERFORMANCE

This study is entitled Pronunciation Errors in Students’ English-Speaking Performance. It aims at analyzing pronunciation errors found in students’ speaking performance. Besides, this study also investigates the factors that cause pronunciation errors in student speaking performance. The data of this study were obtained from the results of a speaking test conducted on 8th Grader of Class C Students of SMP Negeri 2 Blahbatuh, Gianyar Regency, Bali, Indonesia. The test was done by asking students to briefly told their experiences during the holidays. The documentation method was used to obtain the data from oral material (speaking performance). A note-taking technique was applied to mark down the relevant data for the study. The data of the study were qualitatively analysed based on theory of phonological errors by Keshavarz (2012), and factors causing errors by Brown (2000). The analysis of this study was presented in informal methods. In the informal method, each problem in this study was presented narratively to make the analysis understood easily. The finding reveals that there are several errors found in students’ speaking performance. Errors include pronunciation errors of English vowels, consonants, and diphthong. The cause of errors in pronunciation of English consonants and English vowels is the intralingual and interlingual factors. Pronunciation errors of English consonant are mostly caused by interlingual factors, while vowel pronunciation errors tend to be caused by intralingual factors.

Interpersonal impressions of a social robot versus human in the context of performance evaluations

ABSTRACT Extending previous research on the Computers Are Social Actors paradigm and the human-to-human interaction script, this study examines the interpersonal impressions of a social robot evaluator versus a human evaluator in a performance evaluation context. A between-subjects experiment was conducted to measure participants’ impressions of the credibility, task and social attractiveness, and social presence of a social robot or a human evaluator of their public speaking performances. Additionally, participants rated the competence of the feedback they received. Both evaluators (human and social robot) garnered mostly “favorable” interpersonal impressions. Moreover, both agents’ feedback was rated favorably. In all cases, the human evaluator was rated significantly higher than the social robot evaluator. Implications for the use of social robots in educational evaluator roles and for future human–robot interaction research are discussed.

SMARTPHONE VIDEO RECORDING AS A LEARNING TOOL TO IMPROVE INDONESIAN EFL STUDENTS� SPEAKING PERFORMANCE

This research attempts to reveal the effectiveness of using smartphone video recording as an English learning tool to improve the students� speaking performance and the students� interest in using the tool in speaking learning process. All participants were second-grade students of private boarding school in Makassar, Indonesia. This research was conducted through quasi experimental study design with two groups comprises of 25 students in the experimental group and 25 students in the control group. The instruments were speaking test to collect the data about the students� speaking performance and questionnaire to find out the students� interest. The data collections were then analyzed through descriptive and inferential statistics through SPSS Program Version 23.0. The result of data analysis showed that (1) using smartphone video recording was more effective than in-class monologue presentation to improve the students� performance in speaking. It is seen from the significance t test result that reveals the significance value is lower than the significance level; 0.005 <0.05. Furthermore, in relation to the students� interest in using smartphone video recording to learn speaking and (2) it was found that the students� interest in using smartphone video recording was categorized as high. Keywords: Smartphone video recording; speaking performance; interest.

SPEAKING LEARNING STRATEGIES EMPLOYED BY ENGLISH-MAJORED SOPHOMORES AT COLLEGE OF FOREIGN ECONOMIC RELATIONS

The increasing demand for good communicative skills in a globalized society activates English speaking learning around the world. Specific to the Vietnamese context, after many years of being much exposed to English, most of tertiary students still find it difficult to communicate effectively in realistic situations since they have not yet possessed effective speaking learning strategies (Richards, 2002; Rababa’h, 2005). This study aimed at exploring speaking learning strategies employed by 82 English-majored sophomores at College of Foreign Economic Relations (COFER), Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Mixed-methods design was used for collecting data, involving the two research instruments: a questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. While quantitative data obtained from the questionnaire were analyzed by SPSS 22.0, interview results were thematically analyzed. The findings of the study indicated that the majority of the English-majored sophomores usually utilized both direct and indirect strategies. The most frequently used strategies consisted of structuring or planning of ideas and language input, using dictionary for vocabulary learning, compensating for linguistic limitations by code-switching, nonverbal forms, synonyms, paying attention, deeply breathing, and asking for clarification. However, activating prior knowledge, self-training language input, self-evaluating speaking performance were less frequently used among many students. For implications, teachers should make students aware of the importance of background knowledge and create more opportunities for students to utilize their prior knowledge in their speaking performance, encourage them to frequently practice their listening skills and pronunciation to improve speech quality, and guide them how to assess their own speaking performance.

The Effect of Psychological Factors on English Speaking Performance of Students Enrolled in Postgraduate English Language Teaching Programs in Pakistan

This research attempted to identify the psychological factors that affect the speaking performance of students enrolled in Postgraduate English Language Teaching programs in Pakistan. A quantitative approach was used to address the main aim of this study. The participants of the research were 100 postgraduate students enrolled in English Language Teaching (ELT) and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) programs of public sector higher education institutions and universities in Pakistan. The findings revealed that many students in this study reported finding it difficult to speak in English in foreign language classrooms due to psychological factors like lack of selfconfidence, lack of self-esteem, fear of making mistakes, shyness, anxiety and motivation mainly. The findings also revealed that almost all the psychological factors are interlinked with each other and have a direct effect on the speaking performance of the students in this study.

Talking Sticks as a Technique to Stimulate the Students' Speaking Performance

Talking sticks is an alternative teaching technique to support students in developing their speaking performance. Holding the talking sticks empower the deep communication between people and allow opportunities to speak up during the classroom. Thus, the present study is to stimulate the students' speaking performance in EFL classroom by utilizing the talking sticks. It applied classroom action research which was conducted in four stages; planning, action, observation, and reflection. A total of 22 students is the subject of speaking tests, observation, and interviews. The results demonstrated a significant improvement of students' speaking performance which can be seen in the mean score result and the number of students passing the minimal standard score. The mean score gained 9.43 higher than in the pre-test and 77% of students passed the minimal standard score. Both of these criteria indicated that utilizing the talking stick can boost the students' speaking performance

THE IMPACTS OF GRAMMATICAL COMPETENCE TOWARDS STUDENTS’ SPEAKING PROFICIENCY IN LEARNING ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

This investigation is conducted standing on the gap that there are students of English who are good in speaking the target language but do not master the grammar well, and there are also found students who have adequate grammatical awareness but cannot express themselves orally. This study aims at identifying common grammatical errors occur while students are speaking and how students’ grammar ability influences their speaking performance. This study was conducted in a Basic Speaking Class of First Year English Department Students of UIN Ar-Raniry. The Students’ grammatical mastery was tested as well as examining their speaking proficiency in order to discover the impact that the grammar has over the speaking. Two teachers of speaking were also interviewed in order to verify a number of supportive information. The result of the study showed that “subject-verb agreement” (SVA) was the most frequent grammatical error occurred in students’ speaking practice. It was also admitted that grammatical issue has not a big deal in determining students’ ability to speak English.

INVESTIGATING ENGLISH DEPARTMENT STUDENTS’ FOREIGN LANGUAGE SPEAKING ANXIETY: A CASE STUDY IN UNIVERSITAS AIRLANGGA, INDONESIA

Anxiety during a speaking performance is a common phenomenon experienced by any EFL learners, including students majoring in English. Focusing on the issue, this study investigates the correlation between students’ foreign language speaking anxiety and speaking achievement. Moreover, this study also observes the levels and the sources of the speaking anxiety among the English Department’s fifth-semester students of Universitas Airlangga. This study used the Foreign Language Speaking Anxiety Scale (FLSAS) by Öztürk and Gurbuz (2014). The FLSAS questionnaire was distributed to 114 students in order to explore the correlation between speaking anxiety and speaking achievement, the speaking anxiety levels, and the speaking anxiety sources. The data collected through questionnaire were analyzed with SPSS 25.0. Pearson Product Moment Correlation isused to determine the correlation, while descriptive statistic alanalys is isused to investigate the levels and the sources for speaking anxiety. Horwitz, Horwitzand Cope’s(1986) theory and Horwitz and Young (1991) about the source and the levels of foreign language speaking anxiety are also used in this study. This study found that there is a significant negative correlation between speaking anxiety levels and speaking achievement. This means the higher the speaking anxiety they experience, the lower the achievement score they get. Most of the students have moderate levels of speaking anxiety, which is mainly due to the fear of negative evaluation.This study indicates that although the EFL learners are often exposed to English, they still experience speaking anxiety. These findings suggest that the lecturers should be more aware of students’ anxiety and use strategies that might encourage the students to speak more confidently.

PROMOTING STUDENTS’ CRITICAL THINKING THROUGH PEER FEEDBACK IN ORAL COMMUNICATION CLASSROOM

Being able to speak critically requires think critically. This study explicates students’ perception on the use of oral peer feedback/review in establishing their speaking ability and critical thinking. Peer feedback/review is commonly employed in the classroom learning process especially in writing and oral communication classroom. The study acquired a qualitative case study design. Questionnaires and interviews were disseminated to gain the data. The eighteen undergraduates’ students of the English education program taking oral communication classroom entailed in this study. Findings indicated that most of the students perceived the beneficial use of oral peer feedback to enhance their oral communication speaking and critical thinking skills. They found that their peer feedbacks/review were very functional in establishing their oral communication skill. Defining the oral peer feedback/review, the students elucidated that it helped them in describing, analyzing, and evaluating critically what they had experienced. Concerning the findings, the students were able to reflect on their previous speaking performance and become more critical in analyzing and evaluating each of the performance sessions. Also, they were more aware of their comprehension of the materials taught in the classroom from the previous feedbacks/review. The findings profound that regular practices of oral peer feedback/review can be accomplished to develop students’ critical thinking to speak critically. Future studies might explore the extent to which these peer feedback activities have a quantitative effect on students' critical thinking skills.