Pedagogical Practices Employed in Teaching and Learning Speaking Skills at Taif University

Abstract

The aim of instructing speaking skills is to help students develop better oral communication. That is possible if teachers employ better techniques to enhance the use of English in the class and motivate their learners to utilize important strategies for practicing speaking skills. The current study investigates pedagogical practices in use by English professionals to teach speaking skills to their students, and strategies and approaches applied by leaners to improve their speaking skills. Questionnaire survey was conducted by recruiting 184 male and female undergraduate students from different streams at Taif University. The data was analyzed through SPSS and presented with the help of descriptive tables. The results of this study reveal that teachers moderately employed important techniques and strategies in their teaching. Among the strategies and techniques which were not frequently employed by English professionals were: role-play, group work, pair discussion, picture description, dialogue, debating, and storytelling. Students also lacked in utilizing important strategies which hinder their progress in developing better speaking skills. The attitude of learners towards learning a foreign language was negatively affected by the level of difficulties faced by them. The study concluded that teachers' role is very important to develop a favorable learning environment and involve students to practice English through various useful techniques and strategies necessary for the development of speaking skills.Keywords: pedagogical practices, strategies, techniques, attitude, difficulties and learners' experience of speaking skills BackgroundEnglish is an international language; it can be utilized to communicate with people either native or non-native ones. However, it has more application in academic sector because all students in the universities require English to study and search information in this language. That is why a number of universities in the world would have to put English as a necessary academic requirement. At higher education stage English language is mostly incorporated as medium of instruction (Murray & Christison, 2010). It is most essential to have fluency in communication when speaking English as foreign language (EFL) or second language (ESL) when it comes to oral communication. Moreover, it is complex phenomena to communicate but simultaneously most significant to make progress in various fields (Al-Sibai, 2004, p. 3).The aim of instructing speaking skills is to make students' oral commination better. That is why the main objective of teaching activities in the class should be enhancing language use of students (Haozhang, 1997). Previously, the oral skills were ignored deliberately with a misconception that they will develop naturally later on and was believed that the cognitive skills in writing activities will generate oral skills (Chaney, 1998). Further, Ur (1996 believes that among all four skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) speaking is the most important one beca...