Digital Speech Classes: A Pathway into Future
Seokyeong University, South Korea
ABSTRACT
Designing an effective interface for English Speaking classes to monitor output, notice weaknesses, and provide feedback has always been a challenge for English teachers. The ephemeral nature of speech hinders assessment, peer review, and self-reflection of L2 spoken output for both students and instructors. This study investigated the use of video recording for speech classes. Video recording of speeches has proven to be a great tool that offers direct benefits to learners including: providing a tangible record of what was said, being a great opportunity for peers to watch the video again for detailed online feedback, and allowing students to reflect on how their oral skills for improvement. Data was collected for the duration of one academic semester (16 weeks) from undergraduate students at two universities; 48 South Korean university students and 37 Pakistani university students. A mixed method approach was used to analyze data that was collected in form of participants’ speech recordings, feedback comments to their peers, self-reflection, and interviews responses. A detailed comparison is also provided between Korean and Pakistani university students’ attitudes and performance in speech classes using video recording as a tool for assessment, peer-feedback, and selfreflection. A comprehensive description is provided that reveals students’ perceptions towards recording as a tool to enhance speech skills, the effects of video-recorded in-class speeches, reflection tasks, and online peer feedback. The findings suggested that the video-recorded speeches helped learners enhance their speaking skills. This also supports the existing research supporting the effectiveness and wide applicability of video-recorded speeches in contentbased instruction. More importantly, the study offers some practical tools and strategies for setting up a video-recording infrastructure for speech classes. The goal of this study is to engage practitioners about collaborative learning, so they can subsequently implement this information in their own respective classrooms.
KEYWORDS
Video recorded speeches, online feedback, peer assessment, self-reflection