The Role Of Pre-Speaking Activities In Students' Oral Performance

The present study attempts to investigate the role of pre-speaking activities in students' oral performance and the preferences of students with different language proficiencies towards these activities. For these purposes, research questions and three different instruments have been designed and used: questionnaires, group interviews and tape transcription. Data have been collected and analyzed in quantitative and qualitative ways. And the results obtained from all the approaches have been compared and synthesized to provide findings and responses to the research questions.For a quantitative analysis of the results three aspects are explored. They are number of words, time used and words produced per minute. It is found that students have made progress in these three aspects after pre-speaking activities. Then, the qualitative aspects of students' recordings are explored. It is revealed that they have made progress in four aspects of their speaking: topic-relatedness, content, fluency and vocabulary choice and use. Third, the questionnaire and interview shows that most students in the class prefer video watching to reading and listening. The paper concludes that pre-speaking activities play a positive role in activating and encouraging students to speak. It helps to improve students' oral performance in English class.