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| | June 2009 home | PDF Full Journal | | SWF |
Volume
11. Issue 2
Article 9
Title
Analysis of Communication Strategies used by Freshman Active English Students using YackPack for Homework-based Speaking Tasks
Author
Samuel Andrew Meyerhoff
Saga University in Kyushu, Japan
Bio Data:
Andrew Meyerhoff has BA and TESOL training from the University of British Columbia, and an M. Ed. in Curriculum Studies from Acadia University. Mr. Meyerhoff has been teaching ESL and EFL for over 20 years. He started in Canada, teaching immigrant students for a local school board, but has spent most of the past two decades in Japan where he has taught mainly in schools and universities. He is presently an assistant professor at Saga University in Kyushu, Japan. His research interests include curriculum development, social constructivist learning, and integrating technology into the curriculum.
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Abstract
This paper analyzes the progress of Active English (AE) students’ speaking at Saga University over a five-week period in Fall 2007. The researcher was interested in both quantity (speech rate, lexical density, etc.) and quality (lexical and grammatical accuracy) of speech, as well as the implementation of communication strategies. He, also, looked at speech differences between apparent planned and unplanned speech acts. He concludes that further studies be conducted to look at the roles of teacher and student feedback and motivation on speaking fluency and accuracy, challenging current assumptions, as well as the extent to which individual task questions impact on students’ speaking performance. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, he calls for further research to analyze the roles of planned and unplanned speech on EFL language development, especially in regards to functional planning which has been under investigated to date.
Keywords: Communication strategies, oral fluency, accuracy, lexical density/complexity, procedural/ declarative knowledge
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