The Use of Structured Instant Online Discussion to Enhance College Students' English Oral Proficiency

• Main Authors: Ling-Yin Chang, 張齡尹
• Other Authors: Ya-Ting Yang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/89894028116543078372

碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 教育研究所 === 95 === The purposes of this study is to empirically examine: (a) the effectiveness of the practice of students’ English oral proficiency via structured synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) discussions, and (b) students’ attitudes toward English speaking learning after practicing their English proficiency via structured SCMC online discussions. The research method was a pretest and posttest quasi-experimental design. The participants of this study were 59 students of Freshman English Course (大一英文課程) enrolled in one university in Taiwan. The experiment lasts 16 weeks. The independent variable is the instructional strategy which was divided into two levels: structured SCMC online discussions and unstructured SCMC online discussions. The two dependents variables are students’ English oral proficiency and their attitudes toward English speaking learning. A variety of measurement methods were used. ANOVA, ANCOVA, and Paired Sample t-Test statistic methods were used to evaluate the experimental results. The following summarizes the results: 1. Although the mean gain scores of pretest and posttest of the experimental group were higher than those of comparison group, they were not statistically significant. The facilitation of structured Skype online discussion did not significantly enhance students’ English oral proficiency. 2. The results of the Attitude Survey showed that the students of the experimental group have more favorable attitude toward English speaking learning after practice of English speaking via Skype with structured online discussions than the students of comparison group.