Communicative activities in the speaking skill development

Abstract

The main objective of this study was to investigate whether the implementation of communicative activities in the English language learning process improves the speaking skill of students belonging to eighth year of basic general education. To determine the effectiveness of communicative activities in improving students' speaking skill, a pre-test and a post-test of verbal development were applied. These exams were structured based on the KET (Key English Test) international exam and were taken by the students of the 8th grade of basic general education of the Unidad Educativa Pedro Vicente Maldonado during the 2018-2019 academic period. A booklet with class plans was designed which served as a guide for the implementation of this study in the classroom with the students of the experimental group. These class plans mainly contained communicative activities such as questions, role plays, games, information gaps, storytelling, and describing pictures. All these activities were combined with speaking sub-skills namely grammar, pronunciation, interactive communication, repair and repetition, and appropriacy. All the activities carried out were focused on the oral communication of the students who demonstrated improvement after this process. Having finished the intervention in the classroom, a post-test was taken which had the same approach as the pre-test. Then, the processing of the data obtained for subsequent analysis and interpretation was performed through the Student's T-Test. The results demonstrated that the implementation of the communicative activities enhances the speaking skill of the students.