Improving Iranian EFL learners speaking skill by activating

content schemata through pre-task

By Majid Hassanpour

Department of English, Guilan University

M.A. in TEFL

I wrote this paper as a project and nothing more.

Abstract:

Speaking is the most wanted skill of all 4 skills required for learning a second/foreign language.

However, many learners have problems in speaking and couldn’t communicate effectively. But, in order

to communicate effectively, students must pay attention to different components which place a burden on

their cognitive capacity. Therefore, I proposed that by activating students’ content schemata we can

improve their speaking ability. So, Twelve students participated in this study and they were divided into 2

groups, one control group and on experimental group. A sequence of a pre-test, treatment (for the

experimental group only), post-test was followed and the results showed the significance of activating

students’ content schemata.

Introduction

Learning English as a foreign language has become very popular today in Iran because of

the importance of English as an International language which could be used to communicate with

people across a range of countries and the awareness of this fact by parents and adults has led to

an increase in the number of language learners in the country.

Moreover, as stated by Richards in teaching listening and speaking from theory to

practice (2008) most of the learners think of their success in learning a language in respect to

their ability to speak. Additionally, according to Bahrani and Soltani (2012) the primary concern

of most of the learners in a foreign language learning program is improving their ability to speak.

However, by attending courses for several years, many learners still don’t see themselves

capable of speaking fluently and because of their incapability in speaking, they abandon their

courses completely or go to another language institute in search of a learning program which

promotes their ability to speak English fluently.

Therefore In this paper I as the researcher will investigate one of the possible solutions to this

problem which is the activation of Iranian EFL learners’ content schemata through pre-task

activities to improve their speaking skill.

Defining Concepts

Defining Schema:

The schema was first coined by British psychologist Sir Fredric Bartlett in 1932 which

didn’t take much attention when he introduced it. But surprisingly, it gained a significant

attention during the 1980s first because of the decline of behaviorism thoughts in psychology and

secondly because of the influential work of Rumelhart (Schema: Building blocks of Cognition,

1980). According to Brown schemata which is the plural of schema are “abstract, generalized

mental representations of our experience that are available to help us understand new

experiences” and states that prior knowledge is stored in schemata (2012). Lynch and Mandelson

as cited in Uso-Juan and Martinez-Flor (2006) divide schema into two types, Content Schemata

which include past experiences, topic familiarity, cultural awareness and Formal Schemata

which include knowledge of discourse, vocabulary, and grammar.

Defining pre-task, during task, post-task

According to Ellis, as cited in Hassaskhah (2014) a task is organized is a way that include

three parts: Pre-task phase, during task phase, and post-task phase.

Elis (2003) states that pre-task phase provides an opportunity for language learners to get ready

for the main task through modeling activities, improve their fluency through activating their

background knowledge and experiences in life, also known as schemata, and to promote their

language acquisition by reducing cognitive loads for undertaking a complex task such as

speaking. Next is during task phase, which sets the environment essential for learners to take

control over doing the task by themselves and post-task phase allows learners to check their own

performance and pay attention to forms of the language being used in that particular situation.

Defining Communicative Competence

According to Canale and Swain (1980) there are four essential components in an

authentic communication in life which are called Grammatical, Sociolinguistic, Strategic, and

Discourse competence. Grammatical competence refers to learners’ knowledge of grammar and

vocabulary, Sociolinguistic competence refers to learners’ awareness of the environment in

which the language in being used that also includes pragmatic aspects of language use in society,

Strategic competence refers to the learners’ use of different strategies to compensate their

linguistic inefficiencies, and discourse competence refers to learners’ cohesive and coherent

strings of sentences produced. Therefore, in a communicative task these four components could

be used by learners to take control over their communication to exchange and negotiate meaning

successfully. In order to make this happen, teachers should design a proper task which enables

learners to make use of these components.

Statement of the Problem

Obviously oral production is a necessity in absolutely every classroom which provides

the opportunity for learners to acquire another language, therefore, its importance is always

drawn to the learners’ attention from EFL teachers and institutes encouraging learners to use the

L2 in their classroom and preventing them to use their L1.

But, unfortunately, their interpretation about the nature of speaking skill differs from

institute to institute or teacher to teacher and as Sadeghi and Richards put it, “speaking classes

are most often little more than unfocused discussion sessions, with little real teaching of what

oral proficiency in spoken English entails” (Teaching Spoken English, “n.d” p. 2, para. 1). And

in addition, they’ve concluded that most of the problems teachers face in teaching speaking is

developing learners’ fluency and accuracy along with the finding topics that are interesting to

learners because most of the teachers use course books as the primary source of teaching

material. Similarly Bahrani and Soltani state that speaking classes mainly focus on grammar and

vocabulary rather than the skills necessary to use them (2012). Therefore, according to their

statements, teachers usually focus on one aspect of speaking and neglect the other aspects which

is not how a communication takes place in life.

As I mentioned earlier, to communicate successfully learners should take control over

their learning and try to use different sources that are available to them to communicate

effectively.

For this reason I assumed that by choosing proper topics and activating learners’ content

schemata, speakers’ performance will improve since it reduces their cognitive loads and creates a

thorough scheme of the task and topic in their mind therefore they’re more aware of what they’re

doing and take more control over their language usage.

Research Question

Does activation of content schemata improve Iranian EFL learners’ speaking skill?

Hypothesis

H0: Activation of content schemata has no effect on the improvement of Iranian EFL learners’

speaking skill.

Literature Review

There are too many studies on the effects of activating learners’ schemata on their

reading or listening comprehension skill. But, unfortunately, there aren’t many studies available

about the effects of activating learners’ schemata on speaking skill. Therefore, I decided to list

here only the studies that were relevant to the effects of activating learners’ schemata on

speaking and the reason behind this is to avoid the chaos presented in the literature review of

similar papers.

Rahimpour and Hazar (2007) investigated the influence of topic familiarity on learners’

accuracy, fluency, and complexity of the L2 output. Twenty participants were selected based on

their level of placement test and two tasks were given to each participant, one with a familiar

topic and another with an unfamiliar topic. The result of the study showed that Topic familiarity

has an influence on accuracy and fluency but not complexity.

Another study by Kazemi (2014) studied the effects of topic familiarity on learners’ oral

presentation through using a sequence of a pre-test, treatment, and a post-test from 30 female

learners. Since the lack of a control group the study followed a quasi-experimental design.

Similarly, the result of this study indicated that topic familiarity has an influence on their oral

presentation. In the same vein, Shabani (2013) examined the efficacy of background knowledge

on learners’ speaking ability through a quasi-experimental design with a pre-test, treatment, and

post-test sequence. The study was conducted from 10 pre-university students, which as a pre-test

talked about unfamiliar topics, then went home and prepared themselves by reading books and

watching movies about the other topic, after that, their discussion were considered as a post-test

and the result showed that background knowledge can improve learners’ speaking ability.

A study by Nouraliyan and Khodabanehlou and Jahandar on the effects of learner-based

readiness, including topic familiarity on speaking ability from 60 intermediate learners in a

quasi-experimental design sequence of pre-test, treatment, and post-test showed that learners’

speaking ability were improved.

Method

I. Participants

Twenty Intermediate level students with the age of 20-25 enrolled in this study who were

studying at Vaje Language Academy. They all had received 3 to 2 years of training in English

and to make sure they’re at the same level of proficiency, a Preliminary English Test (PET) of

Cambridge University was conducted and their score showed that the participants are

homogenous there’s no significant difference between them. Next, they were randomly assigned

to two different groups, 10 students in control group and 10 students in Experimental group.

I. Materials/Instruments

As it was mentioned above, Cambridge Preliminary English Test (PET) were used to check

their proficiency. Moreover, two topics were selected from Oxford Landmark Intermediate level

course book (chapter 12, and 4)-Student’s course book was American English File- for the

purpose of testing students speaking skill. The first topic is about the abstract concept of Success

and the second topic is about Traditions and Customs. Twelve questions about these two topics

were selected from 30 questions provided in two online websites ESLDiscucctions.com and

ESLConversationQuestions.com which can be found in the appendix of this paper.

Also, for assessing the speaking skill of students, the researcher created his own rating scale

according to different components of communicate competence and the assessing sheets of PET

exam for teachers. These questions can also be found in the appendix of this paper.

I. Procedures

Before conducting the experiment, I informed the participants about the academic purpose

and significance of the study and, made it clear to them that this test won’t affect their grades in

the academy. Next, I assigned the students of the control group to 5 groups, each group included

2 students. Similarly, I did this with the students in the experimental group.

Pre-test:

Control Group/ Experimental Group

Main task: (10 minutes)

The task designed for the experiment required 2 students, so students performed the test

in pairs. I introduced the topic to them -Topic of the first task was about the tradition and

customs - and asked them to discuss a set of questions about the topic which I just gave to them

(see appendix). Thus, they I asked them to discuss the questions with each other and explore the

topic. Finally, their conversation was tape-recorded and analyzed.

Post-test:

Control Group – No Treatment

There were no pre-task and post-task.

Main Task: (10 minutes)

For post-test, I introduced the topic to the students of the control group -topic of the

second task was about success - and asked them to discuss a set of questions I just gave to them.

Their conversation was tape-recorded and analyzed.

Experimental Group – Treatment Group

Since I designed the task for an experiment, I decided that there’s no need to incorporate

the post-task phase in our communicative task. Then, before the testing, Students of the

experimental group sat in a class and I started the teaching prior to testing them.

Pre-task phase: (15 minutes)

I came and put seven dashes on the whiteboard. Then, I played hangman with the

students about the topic - topic of the second task was about success- After the topic was finally

uncovered I started the treatment (activation of content schemata phase). I wrote 4 names (Steve

Jobs, Ali Daei, Mahmood Hesabi, and Bill Gates) on the board and asked the students if they

were familiar with them. Students introduced them. After that, I asked students if these people

could be considered a successful person or not and stressed that they should give the reason for

their answer. After discussing the topic, students left the classroom and the test time began.

Main Task: (10 minutes)

I introduced the topic to the students and asked them to discuss a set of questions about

the topic which I just gave to them (see appendix). Their discussion was tape-recorded and

analyzed.

Analysis

For analyzing their speaking skill, I created a rating scale based on different components

of communicative competence by Canale and Swain 1981. I produced a set of questions to see if

learners meet different communicative criteria while producing utterances (see appendix)

After analyzing the audio and providing an audio script the evaluation sheets were filled

and a score was given to each learner based on their speech. After rating students’ oral

production, I use two kinds of statistics to show the significance of the treatment,

Results

In order to answer research question and show the effects of activating EFL learners’

content schemata (Independent Variable) through a pre-task activity on speaking skill

(Dependent Variable), I put their score into SPSS and calculated their Mean Score, and Standard

Deviation (see below)

Table 1

Mean Scores

All Control Group Experimental Group

Pre-Test 13.8 13.6 14.0

Post-Test 14.2 13.1 15.3

Difference 0.4 -0.5 1.3

Total Number 20 10 10

Figure 1

Table 2

Standard Deviation

Control Group Experimental Group

Pre-Test 1.42984 1.33333

Post-Test 1.28668 0.94868

Difference -0.14316 -0.38465

Total Number 10 10

0.0

2.0

4.0

6.0

8.0

10.0

12.0

14.0

16.0

18.0

All C Group ExGroup

Test

Sco

res

Student Groups

Mean Score

Pre-Test

Post-Test

Figure 2

It’s clear from table 1 that performing the treatment on experimental group had an effect

on students’ speaking skill since there was a 1.3 raise in their mean score but for control group,

the results showed a decrease in their mean since no treatment was performed on them. In

addition, as you can see in table 2 the standard deviation of both group had decreased but the

experimental group’s standard deviation decrease was much more and suggested that students’

performance of the experimental group were closer their mean score. Based on this statistics, the

null hypothesis of this study is rejected which entails that activating students’ content schemata

does have an effect on learners’ speaking skill. For making this clear, I calculated the t-test for

post-tests of two groups.

T-test

Table 3

Groups Control Group Experimental Group

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

Control Group Experimental Group

Standard Deviation

Pre-test Post-test

Mean

SD

SEM

13.1000000

1.2866800

0.4068839

15.3000000

0.9486800

0.2999990

N 10 10

A t-test from control group and experimental group’s post-test performance showed that

the two-tailed P value equals 0.0004 which by conventional criteria, this difference is considered

to be extremely statistically significant.

Conclusion

According to the results of this study, I believe that there’s a positive relationship

between the activation of students’ content schemata and their oral production because students’

cognitive load will be reduced and they’ll be more inclined to negotiate meaning rather than

form. The Implications this study have for teaching speaking is that by designing a task which

includes a pre-task phase designed for activating students’ schemata, we can improve learners’

speaking ability.

References

Bahrani, T., & Soltani, R. (2014). How to Teach Speaking Skill?. Journal Of Education And

Practice,3. Retrieved from http://pakacademicsearch.com/pdf-files/edu/413/25-

29%20Vol%203,%20No%202%20(2012).pdf

CANALE, M. (1980). THEORETICAL BASES OF COMMUNICATIVE APPROACHES TO

SECOND LANGUAGE TEACHING AND TESTING. Applied Linguistics, 1(1), 1-47.

doi:10.1093/applin/1.1.1

Ellis, R. (2006). The Methodology of Task-Based Teaching. The Asian EFL Journal

Quarterly, 8(3), 19-45. Retrieved from

http://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/30902790/Asian_EFL_Proceedings.pdf?

AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ56TQJRTWSMTNPEA&Expires=1436438904&Signature=G9B

iEBubGtHiEzAgyEv81R3rJPY%3D&response-content-disposition=inline

Hassaskhah, J. (2014). English Language Teaching Methodology. Jungle Publication.

Rahimpour, M., & Hazar, F. (2007). Topic Familiarity effect on Accuracy, Complexity, and

Fluency of L2 output. The Journal Of Asia TEFL, 4(4). Retrieved from

http://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/30902790/Asian_EFL_Proceedings.pdf?

AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ56TQJRTWSMTNPEA&Expires=1436438904&Signature=G9B

iEBubGtHiEzAgyEv81R3rJPY%3D&response-content-disposition=inline

Richards, J. (2008). Teaching listening and speaking. Singapore: SEAMEO Regional Language

Centre.

Sadeghi, K., & Richards, J. Teaching spoken English in Iran. Retrieved from

http://www.professorjackrichards.com/wp-content/uploads/Teaching-spoken-English-in-

Iran-SYSTEM.pdf

The Efficacy of Topic Familiarity on Oral Presentation: Extensive Speaking Assessment Task of

Iranian EFL Learners in TBLT. (2015). International Journal Of Applied Linguistics And

English Literature, 4(3). doi:10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.4n.3p.93

Uso Juan, E., & Martinez Flor, A. (2006). Current trends in the development and teaching of the

four language skills. Berlin: M. de Gruyter.

Appendix

Table 4

Question Pre-Test

# Student Name 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Total %

1 1 2 2 1 1 2 1 2 2 1 15 79%

2 2 1 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 14 74%

3 1 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 13 68%

4 2 1 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 15 79%

5 1 1 1 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 12 63%

6 1 1 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 13 68%

7 1 1 1 1 2 2 1 1 1 1 12 63%

8 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 14 74%

9 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 16 84%

10 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 12 63%

11 1 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 14 74%

12 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 16 84%

13 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 1 13 68%

14 1 1 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 12 63%

15 1 1 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 14 74%

16 1 1 2 1 2 2 2 2 1 1 15 79%

17 2 2 1 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 15 79%

18 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 15 79%

19 1 1 2 2 2 1 1 2 1 1 14 74%

20 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 1 12 63%

Table 5

Question Post-Test

# 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 24 25 Total %

1 1 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 13 68%

2 2 1 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 0 0 15 79%

3 1 2 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 12 63%

4 2 1 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 14 74%

5 1 1 1 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 12 63%

6 1 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 13 68%

7 1 2 1 1 2 2 1 1 1 1 0 0 13 68%

8 2 1 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 13 68%

9 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 0 0 15 79%

10 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 0 0 11 58%

11 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 0 0 16 84%

12 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 0 0 16 84%

13 1 2 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 1 0 0 14 74%

14 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 15 79%

15 1 2 1 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 0 0 15 79%

16 1 2 2 2 1 2 1 2 1 1 0 0 15 79%

17 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 0 0 16 84%

18 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 0 0 17 89%

19 1 1 2 2 2 1 1 2 1 1 0 0 14 74%

20 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 2 2 1 0 0 15 79%

Table 6

DO NOT REPORT Char Pre-Test Post-Test Pre vs Post Test

# Student Names Code Total % Total % Gain/Loss %

1 1 15 79% 13 68% -2 -11%

2 1 14 74% 15 79% 1 5%

3 1 13 68% 12 63% -1 -5%

4 1 15 79% 14 74% -1 -5%

5 1 12 63% 12 63% 0 0%

6 1 13 68% 13 68% 0 0%

7 1 12 63% 13 68% 1 5%

8 1 14 74% 13 68% -1 -5%

9 1 16 84% 15 79% -1 -5%

10 1 12 63% 11 58% -1 -5%

11 2 14 74% 16 84% 2 11%

12 2 16 84% 16 84% 0 0%

13 2 13 68% 14 74% 1 5%

14 2 12 63% 15 79% 3 16%

15 2 14 74% 15 79% 1 5%

16 2 15 79% 15 79% 0 0%

17 2 15 79% 16 84% 1 5%

18 2 15 79% 17 89% 2 11%

19 2 14 74% 14 74% 0 0%

20 2 12 63% 15 79% 3 16%

21 0 0 0% 0 0% 0 0%

22 0 0 0% 0 0% 0 0%

23 0 0 0% 0 0% 0 0%

24 0 0 0% 0 0% 0 0%

25 0 0 0% 0 0% 0 0%

26 0 0 0% 0 0% 0 0%

27 0 0 0% 0 0% 0 0%

28 0 0 0% 0 0% 0 0%

29 0 0 0% 0 0% 0 0%

30 0 0 0% 0 0% 0 0%

Mean Scores 13.8 73% 14.2 75% 0.4 2%

Mean Scores

All Control Group Experimental Group

Pre-Test 13.8 13.6 14.0

Post-Test 14.2 13.1 15.3

Difference 0.4 -0.5 1.3

Total Number 20 10 10

Table 1 1

Figure 3

Standard Deviation

Control Group Experimental Group

Pre-Test 1.42984 1.33333

Post-Test 1.28668 0.94868

Difference -0.14316 -0.38465

Total Number 10 10

Table 2

Figure 4

0.0

2.0

4.0

6.0

8.0

10.0

12.0

14.0

16.0

18.0

All C Group ExGroup

Test

Sco

res

Student Groups

Mean Score

Pre-Test

Post-Test

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

Control Group Experimental Group

Standard Deviation

Pre-test Post-test

T-test

Table 3

Groups Control Group Experimental Group

Mean

SD

SEM

13.1000000

1.2866800

0.4068839

15.3000000

0.9486800

0.2999990

N 10 10

Table 7

Communicative Competence Assessment

Discourse Competence: (6 points- 2 points for each criteria)

1. Does the speaker start/close the conversation? And produce sentences in an appropriate

length? (write the instances where they started the conversation and closed the

conversation)

Observation:

2. Does the speaker add new relevant information to flow of information? (write the

instances where they added new information)

Observation:

3. Does the speaker produce unified spoken discourse? (write the instances where they

produced unified utterances and write the instances they produced irrelevant spoken

discourse)

Observation:

Grammatical Competence: (6 points- 2 points for each criteria)

1. Does the speaker have a good pronunciation? (Write the bad ones/good ones)

Observation:

2. Does the speaker produce grammatically correct sentences? (write the incorrect/correct

sentences)

Observation:

3. Does the speaker use different, new and relevant vocabularies? (Write the words/write

the repetitive words)

Observation:

Sociolinguistic competence: (4 points- 2 points for each criteria)

1. Does the speaker understand the nature of different situations?

Observation:

2. Does the speaker use formal/informal speech in their appropriate place?

Observation:

Strategic Competence: (4 points- 2 points for each criteria)

1. Does the speaker stop whenever facing with problems?

Observation:

2. What do they do to compensate for break-downs in their speech? (Do they use

synonyms, antonyms, generalizations, and L1 vocabularies?)

Observation: