COMPOSING SHORT-ORAL STORIES T FOR DEVELOPING EFL SPEAKING SKILL

Composing short-oral stories related to selected interdisciplinary content for developing

EFL speaking skill in fourth graders.
One of the biggest challenges when teaching a foreign language is to motivate
students to speak and interact expressing their opinions and thoughts, maybe due to the lack
of command in the target language, maybe because of students low confidence and
shyness. Those situations were observed in fourth grade students at Luis Ignacio Andrade
School. Due to these reasons researchers decided to implement an intervention consistent in
observations, class videos, interviews, surveys, and class development supported on project
based instruction, through that, teacher-students expected that, fourth grade children at
Luis Ignacio Andrade School would be motivated to speak in English, so that they would
overcome their fears and increase their self-confidence. Hence, accomplish a purposeful
and contextualized learning of the foreign language; moreover, children would improve
their participation using the target language orally through the promotion of story-telling
with content based activities.

COMPOSING SHORT-ORAL STORIES T FOR DEVELOPING EFL SPEAKING SKILL

2. PROBLEM STATEMENT
Teaching English as a foreign language entails multiple difficulties in the context of
Colombian public schools for many reasons, first, primary teachers have not the necessary
level of proficiency to teach English because they were not educated for this. So, this
panorama affects directly the quality of English learning programs inside schools and in the
same way, the possibilities students have to approach to English in a high and adequate
level.
Because of that reasons, and with the purpose to contribute to improve and
overcome some difficulties, a couple of researchers decided to develop an action research
based on a pedagogical intervention consistent in observation, surveys, interviews and the
implementation of a project based action plan. In which teacher-researchers objective
consisted in develop some strategies that induce fourth graders to compose short-oral
stories with selected interdisciplinary content in order to promote oral communication, and
to overcome some students fears to communicate and express in public because of their
lack of confidence.
In this way this research was developed to try to answer two questions: Does the
composition of short-oral stories with selected interdisciplinary content develop oral
communication in English? And, are fourth graders capable to construct short-oral stories
with selected interdisciplinary content, to improve oral communication in English?

COMPOSING SHORT-ORAL STORIES T FOR DEVELOPING EFL SPEAKING SKILL

3.1. RESEARCH QUESTIONS
Does the composition of short-oral stories with selected interdisciplinary content
develop oral communication?
Are fourth graders capable to construct short moral stories with selected interdisciplinary
content, to improve oral communication?
3.2. RESEARCH OBJECTIVE
Develop strategies that induce fourth graders to compose short-oral stories with
selected interdisciplinary content in order to promote oral communication.

5. METHODOLOGY

COMPOSING SHORT-ORAL STORIES T FOR DEVELOPING EFL SPEAKING SKILL

5.1. RESEARCH DESIGN
5.2. POPULATION: participants in this research were thirty one fourth grade
students between 8 and 10 years old, from both sexes, from strata one and
two, from Luis Ignacio Andrade School, a public school located in a
neighborhood called Las Granjas, on the north oriental zone of the city of
Neiva. In which two shifts have place: in the morning attend students from preschool to fifth grade, and in the afternoon, go students from sixth grade to
eleventh grade.
5.3. INSTRUMENTS: instruments in which researchers supported their
investigation, were: class observation, from which they could analyze that, at
the very beginning, we could observe a not much participative group in which
despite showing so interested in the class, they didnt want to participate,
because of the lack of command of the language, and because they felt
ashamed about their mates laughing. After a while they started to feel more
comfortable, and they participated much more.
Most of the class, by both: teacher and students was developed in
Spanish.
Teacher gave some worksheets to the students in order to reinforce
vocabulary and the topic learned through the class. They show a lot of interest
in completing the written activities and to show the teacher their progress.
Some of the students that understood easily liked to support those
students that needed to.

COMPOSING SHORT-ORAL STORIES T FOR DEVELOPING EFL SPEAKING SKILL

An interview to five students in which they reported: That their major
difficulty to talk in English is due to they feel embarrassed because of their
pronunciation; that they do not have opportunities apart from their English
class to speak in English; they expressed that they need more practice of the
four English skill to improve their command of the language; also they reported
that they have different learning styles; and finally they expressed that they
would like to learn from other subject through the use of English.
An interview to the English teacher who reported: her methodology
used in English classes do not differs a lot from other classes. In other words,
she applies as well as possible her knowledge about the language to do the
best she can. She mentioned that after the first semester she tries to
implement songs as a strategy to support her English teaching inside the
classroom as a strategy to promote speaking.
And a class intervention developed through.