An Exploratory Study On Improving Oral English Proficiency By Length Approach

Although a number of studies have reported on the positive effect of writing on second language development,to the best of my knowledge,few studies to date have examined the potential impact of writing on speaking in second language acquisition.To add to our understanding of the relationship between speaking and writing,this study,based on CAF analysis of oral performance,explores whether speaking can be indirectly improved through Length-Approach writing tasks.In this study,31non-English-majorpostgraduateswere randomly assigned to a control group and an experimental group based on their pre-test scores.To ensure consistent and parallel instructions across participants,all students took the same three-week English course taught by the same instructor but were assigned different homework,with the control group doing the conventional homework,and the experimental group doing writing tasks.All participants took a pre-test and a post-test of oral proficiency,which were comparable in difficulty and both involved the participants recording a two-minute open-ended response to each prompt.The results show a significant difference between the experimental group and the control group in their post-test mean scores.Significant inter-group differences are found on four measures of fluency(speech rate,phonation time ratio,average length of pauses,mean length of run,but not on articulation rate).Regarding complexity,similar increases are found for both groups on two measures of lexical sophistication(K1,K2 word ratios)without significant inter-group difference on these measures.No significant difference is found on measures of syntax complexity and accuracy for the experimental group.Also discovered in this study is a high percentage of frequency with which dysfluency phenomena occur before the articulation of content words,particularly nouns.Implications for language instructions in an EFL context are also discussed.