The effects of speaking portfolios on speaking ability and interactional competence of Thai EFL undergraduate students

Abstract

Interactional competence has been in the lime light of L2 instruction and assessment over the recent decades as well as the use of portfolio assessment in language classrooms to provide students with opportunities to monitor their own progress as well as enhancing their language skills. This present study was thus conducted to examine the effects of using speaking portfolios on speaking ability and interactional competence of Thai EFL undergraduate students in order to serve three major objectives as follows: 1) to examine the effects of using speaking portfolios on students’ speaking ability; 2) to examine the effects of using speaking portfolios on students’ interactional competence; and 3) to examine student’s attitude towards the use of speaking portfolios in the instruction. The instruments used included instructional materials with the use of speaking portfolios as an instructional and assessment instrument, a speaking test administered at the pre- and post-implementation stage, and an attitude survey form. The data derived were computed and analysed using descriptive statistics and paired sample t-test. The results of this study show that there were statistically significant differences in pre-test and post-test scores of all speaking tasks which could reflect a positive effect of the instruction implementation with the use of speaking portfolios on students’ speaking scores and interactional competence scores. In addition, it was found that the result of the attitude survey conducted after the instruction appeared to be at high level both in overall and in every individual aspect.