A critical examination of EFL learners' difficulties
in speaking: towards developing an effective pedagogy
Zeng Simin (曾思敏), Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen
This
article seeks to identify Chinese EFL learners’ difficulties in speaking. Three
students enrolled in an intermediate English listening and speaking course at a
university in southern China participated in an out-of-class practice session
for in-depth study. During seven speaking classes, they were given both an
independent and integrated speaking task adapted from TOEFL. Students were
prompted to consider the problems they experienced when speaking and reflected
on what kind of teacher interventions would be helpful. Analysis of their
speaking productions and written self-reflections provided evidence that
learners mainly encounter three types of speaking difficulties: 1) ideas (what
to say); 2) language (how to say); and 3) delivery (how to say it well). The
results also shed light on what kind of instructional support would be welcome
in terms of speaking development.
Zeng
Simin currently serves as an assistant professor at Harbin Institute of
Technology, Shenzhen, China. She obtained her Ph.D. in second language
education from the University of Cambridge. Her work mainly examines L2
learners’ self-regulation and seeks to explore pedagogical interventions that
facilitate the growth of self-regulation from the perspective of dynamic
assessment.
Explicit instruction of oral communication strategies
Chen Yisha (陈怡莎),
SUSTech Education Group (Nanshan) NO. 2 Experimental school, Guangdong
The study to be presented explored:
- The use of oral
communication strategies (OCSs) before and after the explicit teaching of
OCS.
- The association between
the use of OCS and students' anxiety levels during class interaction.
- The association
between the use of OCS and the quality of class interaction.
To this end, six classes' interactions were recorded as speech samples,
analyzed, and rated using the scale of strategic proficiency developed in China
Standards of English. Self-reported questionnaires and retrospective interviews
were conducted to map students' cognitive processes, emotions, and attitudes
during communication. This study provides a glimpse
into the effectiveness and significance of explicit teaching of oral
communication strategies within junior secondary schools. It also introduces a
scale of OCS based on the descriptions from the China Standards of English,
which supports EFL teachers.
Chen Yisha graduated from the Chinese University of
Hong Kong with a master degree in translation. She is currently teaching
English at SUSTech Education Group (Nanshan) NO. 2 Experimental school, a
public junior high school in Shenzhen, China. She has been collaborating with
teachers from various disciplines or of the study group
in developing interdisciplinary courses, working on action researches about
classroom interaction and guiding students to learn through project-based
activities.
The perception of undergraduates toward video clips aiming to enhance
spoken English
Li Ruolin (李若琳),
Northeast Normal University, Heilongjiang
With the widespread development of video clips, more and more teachers
tend to use this novel way to produce short instructional videos as a teaching
method. This paper aims to reveal the authentic voices of undergraduate
students toward video clips that aim to enhance spoken English. Furthermore,
the findings will help instructors and designers specialized in videography to
improve their products on learning spoken English in terms of content,
attractiveness, and usefulness.
This is an on-going research project that hypothesized that students
from different year groups might show different preferences towards the short
videos. The reasons behind this would be further explored based on the
interview data. The results will provide some pedagogical insights from
analyzing students' perceptions about learning spoken English using video
clips.
Li Ruolin is an IETLS teacher with a CELTA
certificate from Beijing New Oriental. She graduated from Northeast Normal
University, Heilongjiang. She currently makes educational videos for her
17,000+ followers on TikTok and the "Learning English through TED"
program on Netease Cloud.
