Idioms and efl speaking skill

Abstract

Idioms are a fundamental part of everyday conversation in English. The use of colloquial expressions allows to speak similar to a native person using informal phrases proper of a particular place that demonstrate feelings or actions. The purpose of this research is to carry out a study in relation to the following topic: "Idioms and EFL speaking skill" that investigates the relationship between the variables and the improvement of the speaking fluency through idioms in English aimed at students of English as a foreign language. In the first instance, this research was carried out using a mixed approach through the completion of a pre-test and a post-test that was taken from section two of the Cambridge PET Speaking, which evaluates the four main speech sub-skills: grammar and vocabulary, discourse management, pronunciation and interactive communication. The paired samples t-test statistic was used to analyze quantitative data. On the other hand, for the evaluation of the sub-skills, activities based on basic conversations with topics of daily life using taught idioms were applied. Additionally, twenty idioms based on basic topics used in common conversations were taught to 30 university students in the second semester of the "Pedagogy of National and Foreign Languages" course at the Technical University of Ambato. Finally, based on the results obtained in the evaluations carried out before and after treatment, a general mean of 1.8 was obtained in the pretest and 2.1 in the posttest. These results were evaluated on 5 points taken from the scales of each subskill of the PET speaking rubric. Due to the use of idioms, the improvement of the speaking skill was effective through the use of cooperative strategies which promoted communicative interaction among students.