Empowering learners: online radio broadcasts to enhance the students' speaking skills

Abstract

The speaking skill is one of the most challenging skills to develop in the Content and Language Integrated Learning Classroom (CLIL) since it requires the student to have enough confidence and language proficiency to communicate their ideas and opinions about a topic effectively. Noticeably, students lack opportunities to talk in the classroom and use the language. As a result, the student doesn’t experience the language nor improve their oral skills. Therefore, it is imperative that schools take into consideration the use of ITC resources, such as online radio sources, because they might be useful tools wherein students can participate actively and enhance their speaking skills vastly. A quasi-experimental study was carried out in an Ecuadorian High school. The objective of this study was to measure the influence of critical thinking interviews during an online radio broadcast transmission on the students’ oral skills. 10th graders studying Social Studies were assigned to this study. From this group, 10 students were part of the treatment group and 10 in the control group. Treatment participants were interviewed in pairs four (4) hours per week for two months on questions related to the social studies topics such as culture, gender, human rights, ethnicity, and others during the radio broadcast transmission in the English language. Data was collected by means of a speaking pre-test and post-test based on a rubric measuring four parameters: Grammar, Vocabulary, Pronunciation, and Fluency. Results were processed through SPSS software and analyzed based on the literature review. Findings demonstrated that there was a significant and positive impact on the treatment participants’ speaking skills.