Effect Of Length Approach To Speaking On Non-English Majors’Spoken English

This study was undertaken to investigate effect of Length Approach to Speaking on non-English majors’spoken English in terms of length, content, organization and language. The theories on which this study is based are Swain’s Output Hypothesis and Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis. The purposes of this study are to build up their confidence and improve their spoken English.The participants in this study were two classes of46freshmen majoring in Automation at School of Electronics and Information, Yangzhou University. Before the experiment, a pre-test was conducted to find out that there was no significant difference between the two classes. Class1, was labeled as the experimental group (EG), while Class2, as the control group (CG). In order to prevent the Hawthorne effect, the teacher did not mention a word about the experiment to the students so that they did not need to work extremely hard to please her. The treatment in EG involved5steps:assigning a speaking task with specific emphasis on at least300words in three minutes, students’after-class preparations, recording the presentation, scoring and commenting on the presentations. The instruments in this study were two speaking tests, in which the two topics were argumentative in genre and familiar to the participants. The two tests, which were taken in the multi-media language laboratory, were recorded and then transcribed by the researcher. Data analysis involved scoring and comparison. Both tests were scored with the same scoring criteria:length (40points), content (20points), organization (20points), and language (20points). Independent-samples t-test was employed to see whether there was a significant difference between the two groups in the pre-and post-tests, and paired-samples t-test was employed to see whether there was a significant difference between the pre-test and post-test in each group.This study has generated three major findings.Firstly, Length Approach to Speaking has a positive effect on non-English majors’ spoken English in terms of length. Their length improved by21.25points at.000. This finding may be attributed to three factors. One may be the rating criteria, with length receiving the greatest weight,40points. If students presented less than300words, they would not get full marks in terms of length. Another reason may be the careful and elaborate task design in Length Approach to Speaking, which makes it easier for the students to have something to say and enjoy saying it. The third reason might be the fairly anxiety-free environment with the help of recording. Students could make a long presentation without interruption and were not worried about losing face because only the model recordings were played for analysis.Secondly, Length Approach to Speaking has a positive effect on non-English majors’spoken English in terms of both organization and content. Their organization improved by2.4points, with a significant difference at.000. And their content improved by1.9points, also with a significant difference at.000. One reason may be the teacher’s fairly detailed comments on both organization and content of model presentations. Take the macro-organization of an argumentative presentation for example, its frame includes introduction (stating of one’s opinion), body (2or3arguments with supporting details) and conclusion. The other reason may be the good preparations that students made for presentations. They searched for related materials in different ways, such as going to the library, surfing on the net, communicating with their classmates, and so on. Although the teacher didn’t ask the students to write down the oral presentation, they used to do so and practiced speaking according to the written materials for the preparation.Thirdly, there is no significant difference between the pre-test and post-test in language, which means Length Approach to Speaking has no positive effect on their language improvement. In terms of accuracy, it improved by0.14points at.692. In terms of fluency, it retrogressed by1.64points at.000. This may be attributed to four reasons. One is that the time limit for the speaking test contributed to more mistakes in language. Students didn’t have enough time to prepare for their oral presentations, so they blurted out some slips of the tongue. Another is that focusing on the merits may make students ignore their weaknesses and cause fossilization in the process of learning a language. Still another is that if one pays attention to constructing utterances in speaking as much as possible, accuracy and fluency are hard to reach. The other is that the language improvement is a gradual process with constant fluctuation and instability, which requires a long period of time.This study has three limitations.First, the number of samples employed in this study may be not large enough to be generalizable to the whole population.Second, this study was limited to effect of Length Approach to Speaking on non-English majors’spoken English, rather than on the overall English proficiency.Third, the whole experiment lasted14weeks, which cannot guarantee its long-term effect on spoken English.