387 / 2020-01-14 09:34:55

Effects of Using TED Talks on Chinese Postgraduate EFL Learners’ English Speaking Performance and Speaking Anxiety

TED talks, learning mode, English speaking performance, English speaking anxiety

心理语言学 > 心理语言学

English speaking is a challenging learning task and objective for EFL (English as a foreign language) learners due to the lack of environments of practicing and using the language. This research aimed to explore the effects of using TED talks on Chinese postgraduate students’ English speaking performance and speaking anxiety over a period of 10 weeks. In this research, TED talks were used as a learning mode to provide a quasi-realistic sociocultural context for English speaking. 166 students from the experimental group using TED talks and 156 in the conventional mode participated in the quasi-experiment. They made 8-minute oral presentations and answered the 12-item English Speaking Anxiety Scale prior to and after the experiment. Analyses of the date revealed three major findings: 1) both the experimental and control groups did significantly better in English speaking performance and became significantly less anxious about speaking English over the10-week period, 2) the experimental group did significantly better in move structure and were significantly less anxious about speaking English than the control group towards the end of the 10-week period, and 3) learning modes had a significant effect on students’ move structures of oral presentations but had no effect on their oral presentation and English speaking anxiety. These findings support the benefit of supplementing EFL teaching and learning with TED talks.