Classroom Interactional Implication in Teaching Oral Communication Through The Use of Tasks
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Date
2007-07
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to find out whether the teaching of
speaking through the use of tasks facilitates interaction in the
classroom. To do this, goals, contents as input, activities, roles (roles
of teachers and students) and setting (condition of classroom set up
and satellite television led instruction) were the variables selected.
To achieve the aim, three different instruments were used: classroom
observation, questionnaires and interview. In addition, the
classrooms, students and teachers were used as sources of data.
Concerning the sampling techniques, all teachers who taught in grade
9 were selected using comprehensive sampling. In addition, after
listing down the name of sections handled by these teachers, 1 from
the five lists written under each teacher was selected using a lottery
system. Furthermore, 35 students were randomly selected from every
section. These randomly selected students and a ll the 5 teachers were
asked to fill in the questionnaires. Out of 5 teachers, 2 were randomly
selected for observation. Those observed were also interviewed.
After analyzing and discussing the data collected through the above
instruments, the results of the investigation were obtained. According
to the results, the explicitness of goals, the familiarity of contents to
the students, the potential of goals and contents in reflecting learners'
needs and interests, the authenticity, flexibility, purposefulness and
communicative (interactive) nature of activities could facilitate oral
interactions. On the other hand, insufficient information provision of
the input data, inappropriate difficulty level of activities, ineffective
teachers in acting according to the principles of communicative
language teaching, lack of students' initiative and willingness to interact with each other, heavy and combined desks found in neat
rows, shortage of time given for interaction and the speed of television
teacher's speech could make oral interactions difficult in the
classroom. Based on the above findings, conclusions were drawn and
recommendations were given.
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Keywords
Teaching Oral Communication