4 Bula Cervantes 2016 -How to Develop Speaking Skills Through the Use of Authentic and Semi Authentic Audiovisual Resources

8/16/2019 4 Bula Cervantes 2016 -How to Develop Speaking Skills Through the Use of Authentic and Semi Authentic Audiovi…

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CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS AFTER PROPOSAL

At first, this research began with the concern about learners that despite spending years

attending English classes, and even studying autonomously, were unable to speak in

English and if they did, were unable to hold a conversation. Then, this research was

conducted aiming at developing the speaking skill while attempting to close the gap

between school English and real English. The research was carried out in a sample of 23

high school students, with mostly an A2 in writing and reading level of English; however,

speaking was not in that level of proficiency. Here we presented 8 workshops but the

research was limited due to time availability and we only implemented 62% of them, but in

the future it may be extended not only in time but also in the amount of students taken for

the sample and we expect it can work out especially on the impact authentic and semi-

authentic audio visual resources have on all four skills, listening, speaking, reading and

writing. In addition to that, the use of authentic and semi authentic audiovisual would

preferably be used with learners with an intermediate or higher level of English since it is

easier to find and adapt authentic material for them.

From this research and after much consideration, we concluded that in order to be really

successful it is necessary to mainly, be consistent throughout the whole process of the

workshops completion, unfortunately, these workshops were not continuously carried out

since the school’s, the teacher’s and the researchers’ time were limited. Moreover,

scaffolding almost guaranteed students completion of the usually last speaking task with

ease, since by the end of the workshop they were absolutely acquainted with the

vocabulary, the expressions, the examples and prompts given throughout it, that speaking


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seemed an effortless exercise for some. Phonetics also played a major role in the

development of speaking in this research because this allowed us to realize that some

students did not speak because they simply were not confident enough to do it, but after

approaching the workshop in a sometimes humorous way, students were more confident

and willing to participate. A significant aspect that we tried to keep in mind at all times

when creating a workshop was students’ preferences and opinions, but sometimes because

of the urge to fit an authentic audiovisual with the topics in the curriculum we failed to

obliged to that, causing students to be more excited about certain activities than others. On

top of that searching, adapting and creating a workshop for a particular video or audio can

be particularly time consuming; therefore, authentic audiovisuals should be seen as a

complement to a course book instead of the main source for teaching. A student-centered

class was definitely a change students were not used to do it. At the beginning of this

project, some of them were reluctant to participate in front of the whole class. Thus,

teachers should expect and be patient towards a slow adaptation. A feature that did not play

to our advantage was not having subtitles and transcripts available for all of our activities,

so some students simply got discouraged when they were not able to follow what was going

on in a particular video clip. And lastly, instructors should not rely completely on

technology due to the technical issues that may occur, so it is best to always have a plan b

that may include having an extra laptop to display a video or a different activity related to

the topic prepared that does not depend on electronics.

In a world where your knowledge of a language is judged based on how well you can speak

it, oral production should be priority among teachers, students and curricula.

Acknowledging, of course that it could be one of the most difficult skills to master. The


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challenging task to facilitate it should be approached with creativity, patience and without

fear, and since failing can be discouraging, students should be guided every step of the way

until they are capable of completing the task by themselves, in other words, we recommend

scaffolding as the method of choice. Furthermore, a key component of our research was the

first workshop dedicated to phonetics; it is a component that should not be let out in any

speaking oriented activity. Another aspect that should not be taken for granted is the

students’ opinions and preferences, forasmuch as this is of crucial importance to keep

students engaged and motivated to keep going.

And lastly, classes should be dynamic enough and planned in a student-centered manner

seeing that their active participation is crucial in their development of production skills and

their own learning in general, so there should always be opportunities for open questions,

and enough time for creative oral activities such as role playing and story-telling. And in

closing, there is very important feature when dealing with videos: subtitles. The teacher

should have subtitles and/or transcripts available depending on the level of English of the

students, and provide them when he/she sees it fits.

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4 Bula Cervantes 2016 -How to Develop Speaking Skills Through the Use of Authentic and Semi Authentic Audiovisual Resources