Numbered Heads Together strategy and the development of English oral fluency

Abstract

The current research work was aimed to analyze the impact of Numbered Heads Together in the development of English oral fluency in 24 students from fourth level “A” at Centro de Idiomas UTI. It followed a quantitative approach since the hypothesis was accepted through the application of a statistical method T-Student. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this research was developed through virtual classes because it was not possible to have face-to-face contact with students. Besides, this study collected information from physical and digital resources such as scientific journals, articles, thesis, books, and papers on the internet to support the variables. The research has a preexperimental design in which the instrument for collecting data was a pre and post-test. This study took 4 weeks in which the researcher intervened virtually 9 sessions by zoom virtual platform. The first and last sessions were mainly to apply the pre-test and posttest respectively to measure students speaking ability in terms of oral fluency. The results showed that students needed to improve their speaking skill since the total average of the pre-test was 2,42 over 5 points. Consequently, students were taught by applying Numbered Heads Together following the topics that the coursebook suggested. After finishing the 7 treatment sessions, students took a post-test in order to compare it with the pre-test. The total average for the post test was 3,23. It is important to highlight the progress of 0,81. The results showed that there is a significant difference between both samples. This study concluded that Numbered Heads Together can be used to improve students speaking skill and sub skill such as fluency.