3.5.1 Research materials
The study merely concentrated on the internal course book "English Discoveries and Preparation for TOEIC," although all students spent 15 periods of self-study on the online platform. It is ideal for teachers to use the book in class because it is quick and easy to meet the need for speaking TOEIC and motivate students. Furthermore, the topics can be taught to students individually, in pairs, or in a group that is appropriate for the research topic. The material reflects learning needs and necessary components such as vocabulary, grammar input, reading and listening, and a range of speaking tasks based on authentic sources.
This course book in oral communication skills is designed to provide students with the necessary skills to communicate effectively in everyday situations. The book spreads out 12 units, including 5 speaking tasks: reading a text aloud, describing a picture, responding to questions, responding to questions using information provided, and expressing an opinion in that order.
The content of the speaking sections from Units 1 to 12 was summarized in the following details below:
In task 1, Read a text aloud, students read a text aloud for 45 seconds. They are required to ensure pronunciation, intonation, and stress.
In task 2, Describe a Picture, students make sure all of the requirements in task 1 are met by focusing on grammar, vocabulary, and cohesion through describing the given picture in around 30 seconds.
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In task 3, "Respond to Questions, students answer three given open-ended or closed- ended questions. They also need to understand the relevance and completeness of the content.
In task 4: Respond to questions using information provided mainly in the email or text, students answer depending on the information available. They must meet all requirements in tasks 1, 2, and 3.
In task 5, Express an opinion, students will give their opinions about a specific topic to an interlocutor.
Although the five tasks in the course pertain to speaking skills for TOEIC tests, the researcher focused on some activities in tasks 3 and 5. That means students have a chance to express their ideas individually with a set of three questions in task 3 and work in a pair or group to discuss a specific topic in task 5. The other tasks in the book are either trained as a warm-up for tasks 3 and 5, or trained for a limited time.
In this study, the materials chosen for two groups (the experimental group and the control group) are the same, and they are followed by the course syllabus.
3.5.2 The experimental teaching
Regarding teaching steps, a sample lesson plan is in Appendix A.
The treatment followed the five-phase model of the CALLA approach (Chamot and O’Malley, 1990), in which students received direct instruction in metacognitive strategies for planning, monitoring, and evaluating English oral communication.
After the data collection process from the pretests was finished, the students in EG were instructed in metacognitive strategy training. Separate lesson plans were designed for two groups’ classroom procedures (see Appendix A1). The researcher spent 10 weeks on the experimental teaching.
For CG, they learn oral communication following the convention method, whereas for EG, they study a five-phase model of training. Two groups will not know what kind of teaching method the researcher used because of objectivity.
The two groups had the same curriculum, teaching time, and materials in the speaking class. Every week, both the EG and CG have two lessons on Mondays and Thursdays, each lesson lasts five periods, 50 minutes per period. To ensure that other skills were not affected and to help the students master the training during the study, the research took advantage of a one-hour speaking class every day to teach EG metacognitive strategy training on oral communication; the teaching time was at least 1 period (50 minutes) every day.
After finishing two types of training, the researcher gave students one more period for reviewing what they had learned and taking post-tests.
3.5.3 Description of teaching procedure of the EG
The students in the EG were instructed following the CALLA approach (Chamot and O’Malley, 1990) with five phases as follows: preparation, presentation, practice, evaluation, and expansion. Students received explicit instruction in metacognitive strategies for planning, monitoring, and evaluating oral tasks and metacognitive knowledge, including WWWH questions.
In the phase of preparation, the teacher applied metacognitive knowledge (WWWH questions) to the students’ previous knowledge of the language features involving an oral task (e.g., vocabulary, grammar, phonetics). Then, metacognitive strategies (planning, monitoring, and evaluation) were employed in order to orient students to think about the whole task when any topic was given to them. The orientation was
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just a stepping stone for students to ask themselves a sequence of questions to solve their own problems. Then, the teacher introduced a hands-on oral task.
In the presentation, the teacher modeled and explained metacognitive strategies for planning, monitoring, and evaluating a real task when facing an oral endeavor. She told the students the name of the strategies, their usefulness, and the actions they were supposed to perform to apply the strategies. This corresponded to the explicit training of metacognitive strategies.
In the practice phase, the students had to practice what the teacher had modeled and explained. They rehearsed the new strategy in another authentic oral task.
The fourth phase, evaluation, was also learner-centered. Students evaluated the level of their performance in order to revise what they had learned and what they needed to review in terms of using vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation, as well as their accurate and fluent use of those aspects in an oral speech. In this phase, students self- evaluate themselves.
In the last phase of expansion, students integrated metacognitive strategies and language knowledge to produce another oral task.
3.5.4 The teacher and the raters
The researcher was in charge of two classes, TO1 and TO2, at the center. She has more than thirteen years of professional experience in teaching oral communication classes in English language centers. She ensures the fulfillment of the teaching process at the center and takes on the responsibilities of conducting the treatment in order to help the students in experiment groups improve their oral communication performance after training. It helps her gain insight into understanding the nature of the research and her students better when applying the experiment.
In order to guarantee the experiment’s validity, there were two raters taking part in this project. Both of them were teachers at the center for more than ten years.
Before taking the test, they had a chance to discuss together how to decide on oral communication performance tests as well as assessments for the students. During the test assessment, they played two main roles. The first role was as interlocutors, who had responsibility for managing the interaction by holding discussions directly with students, setting up the task, and giving students the task instructions. The second was as assessors, who had to assess students’ oral communication performance. Both of them worked completely independently of each other. That means they cannot discuss the quality and marks of the students in each test. The results of each item of the oral communication components collected from students in both the pretest and posttest were averaged out.