Impromptu speaking and the oral production

Abstract

The objective of this current research was to investigate how the application of impromptu speaking activities influenced the oral production of 21 students of sixth semester from “Universidad Técnica de Ambato”. This project was carried out in eight classes over three weeks in a face-to-face modality. The approach used in this project was quantitative with an experimental design .Participants took a pre-test and a post-test from the B2 First exam from Cambridge University to evaluate their speaking skills. The test evaluated four criteria: Vocabulary and grammar, discourse management, pronunciation, and interactive communication, each criteria is divided in six bands from 0 to 5 ,being 0 the lowest score and 5 the highest score ,giving a total of 20 points .These results were transformed using a rule of 3 evaluating students over 10 points . In the pretest students had some problems with their discourse management and interactive communication, given that they presented some hesitations problems. For that reason, students had an average of 4,78 over 10 points, which determined that they had a B1 speaking level. After the treatment, the results obtained from the post-test showed a positive impact on the participant’s oral production given that they had a general improvement of all the criteria improving grammar and vocabulary, and pronunciation in 0, 07 points, discourse management in 0, 21 points and interactive communication in 0, 21 points. For the verification of the hypothesis, T-test was used with a value of 0,000 which is less than 0,05. Therefore, the alternative hypothesis was accepted concluding that the application of impromptu speaking activities improved participants' oral production.