| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 英語教學研究所 === 99 === In recent years, the need to use English has become prevalent in Taiwan, and there has been a growing interest in English speaking because it has been considered as an important skill to represent in one’s level of professional resume (Darling and Dannels, 2003). It has been advocated that learning can be best achieved in the form of a community. The present study focuses on a specific learning community – Toastmasters (TM) Club in Taiwan that was created to help people to improve both public speaking ability and to develop leadership.
This study surveyed 56 participants from one regional TM club and one campus TM club. In order to investigate reasons which bring Taiwanese people to the club on a voluntary basis, Kruidenier and Cle´ment’s (1986) four orientations (knowledge, instrument, travel, and friendship) were used to understand TM members’ motivation to attend the club. The members also needed to self perceive their improvements after participating in TM meetings; the areas of improvements were categorized by Shnmin’s (2008) components of speaking proficiency and the goals set up by Toastmasters International (2010). Last, TM members’ overall perception of the value of the TM club were explored in regard to self-confidence, learning autonomy, sense of belonging, and perceived learning benefits. The quantitative data were interpreted by descriptive statistics and MANOVA, while the qualitative data were analyzed by content analysis.
The findings revealed that TM members essentially joined the club for knowledge-oriented motivation to learn English and public speaking; friendship-oriented motivation was the second important factor for the development of interpersonal relationship. Also, a longer membership of TM was found beneficial to self-perceived improvement growth. Members who devote their time to regularly participate in TM meetings believe that they gain greater improvements in English. Finally, the members can feel a pleasant learning environment and sense of belonging to TM, which showed that the TM club is an advantageous learning community. In addition, self-confidence and learning autonomy were found to be developed after a longer term of TM membership; however, there is no guarantee.
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