Improving students’ speaking fluency through communication-based activities

Abstract

his research discusses the problem of teaching and learning speaking fluency to Second Year Students of English at Frères Mentouri University. Literature in the field of speaking skills reveals that fluency is the hardest skill to be taught and learned. Fluency does not obey preestablished regulations and even though many activities are designed to develop it, learners still meet great difficulties to master it as it requires time and intensive practice. This research is developed to identify and experiment the most effective classroom fluency activity that may enhance fluency in foreign language learners’ speech. It attempts to check the validity of the hypothesis which states that teachers of the oral expression module would improve their students speaking fluency if they could identify and practise the most appropriate classroom activity among an array of other activities. Two kinds of means of research are adopted: teachers’ questionnaire and students’ test. The former is planned out to see what second year oral expression teachers suggest to be the most efficient fluency classroom activities. The latter is adopted to experiment what teachers suggest as the best two fluency activities to identify the most effective one among them. The results of both, the teachers’ questionnaire and the students’ test, reveal that ‘free discussion’ is the most effective fluency classroom activity which helps learners minimize shyness and maximize participation in the classroom.