Teacher-student interaction in the speaking skill

Abstract

The research aimed to determine the influence of teacher-student interaction on the improvement of speaking skills in A2 level students at the Charlotte English School. The methodology of the study was quasi-experimental with a mixed approach as it analyzes both quantitative and qualitative data. The main research tool was the Cambridge Key English Test Speaking Section used as a pre-test and post-test to collect data from 6 students (4 females and 2 males). Also, a survey was applied to the whole group at the end of the treatment to analyze the students' attitudes toward the application of the interaction in improving speaking ability. In addition, a preexperimental design was conducted with a treatment of 12 interventions in seven weeks in which interactive activities were used corresponding to cooperative learning. Therefore, the results were first analyzed with the Kolmogorov-Smirnov and ShapiroWilk to determine if the values had a normal distribution. Therefore, the t-test for the verification of the hypothesis. The result was that the alternate hypothesis is accepted. The results showed positive effects in terms of students' oral production due to better control of simple grammatical forms, adequate use of vocabulary to talk about personal topics, opinions, hobbies, etc., and mostly understandable pronunciation after being exposed to interactive activities. In addition, the survey shows that students agree that a friendly and comfortable learning environment promote students to feel safe, comfortable and fosters student´s communicative development.