Oral Communication Skills and Challenges in English of Senior High School Students of Tabaco National High School

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Oral fluency is very important to language learners. It has been observed that students exhibit apprehensions and hesitation in using English. To address the issue, intervention activities were proposed to improve the students' oral communication skills on three language dimensions -sound production, voice projection and proper phrasing and stress of 99 senior high school students of Tabaco National High School in Tabaco City, Albay, S.Y. 2017-2018. It also looked into the challenges met by the students.

METHODS

This employed a true experimental design that utilized a pre-test and post-test design. Two groups were identified - control and experimental group. Quantitative data were then gathered, tabulated, analyzed, and interpreted to establish statistical significance among the variables in relation to the oral communication skills level of the students. Descriptive survey method was used which involved collections of quantitative information tabulated in numerical form, depicts, and describes the data collection. It provided a clear picture of the oral communication skills and challenges in English of senior high school students and its degree of relatedness to independent variables.

RESULTS

There was a significant difference in the pre-test and post-test results of the experimental group. The computed mean in the pre-test was 3.09, the variance of 0.398 while the post-test had a mean of 4.03, variance of 0.405. The obtained t-value was 8.19 which was greater than the tabular value of 2.04, significant at 0.05 level of confidence. The score of pre-test and post-test results were different from each other so the researcher concluded that there was a significant difference between the pre-test and post-test results of the experimental and controlled group along the three dimensions on oral communication skills. The ten challenges in oral communication skills were also identified and the respondents ranked the problems. The first three-ranks were given weight. Rank 1 was difficult to practice speaking English on a daily basis. Two problems emerged from Rank 2.5. These were: difficulty in understanding what others say and responding inappropriately and difficulty in producing a well-modulated voice when talking.

DISCUSSIONS

To measure the effects of the intervention activities to the oral communication skills of the Senior High School students, a post-test was given. It made the process of improvement faster and wider since a greater number of students were able to improve their oral communication skills in English based on the gathered data. This implied that if the educational system wants a faster and wider improvement on oral communication skills in English among students, additional and extensive formal instructions in the target language should be given to the students.