2.3. Previous Related Studies in the Field
2.3.2. The Impact of TBI on L2 Speaking Performance
2.3.2.1. The Impact of TBI on L2 Overall Speaking
Various studies were conducted to investigate the impact of TBI on students’ overall speaking performance in different contexts and across proficiency and educational levels (e.g., Afifah &
Devana 2020; Akalu 2020; Alikahi & Kiany 2021; Belda-Medina 2021; Bygate 1999; Darrashiri
& Mazdayasna 2021; Farahani & Nejad 2009; Hassan et al. 2021; Kirkgöz 2011; Mulyadi et al.
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2021; Nation 1991; Nget, Pansri & Poohongthong 2020; Safitri, Rafli & Dewanti 2019; Xuyen
& Trang 2021). Collectively, these studies adopted the experimental or quasi-experimental research design using pre-post tests as research instruments to measure students’ overall speaking performance before and after the TBI treatment. The results of these studies indicated that TBI was effective in developing students’ overall speaking performance in the classroom context.
Giving a detailed example on how communicative tasks were employed in TBI classrooms, Nget, Pansri and Poohongthong (2020) examined the effects of TBI on L2 students’
speaking performance and their satisfaction towards the use of this approach in the classroom to improve their speaking abilities. The participants were 78 ninth graders selected based on their equal level of language abilities (having same English language experience and similar language learning backgrounds), then divided into an experimental group of 42 students and a control group of 36 students. The non-equivalent quasi-experimental research design was embraced using pre-post tests as tools to collect the research data from both the experimental and control groups. Both groups were given a pre-test at the very beginning to ensure that there are equal in terms of oral proficiency level prior to the treatment and a post-test at the end of the treatment, which lasted for four and a half weeks, to measure the impact of the treatment on their oral performance.
The research material encompassed two sets of nine lesson plans taught by the same teacher over nine consecutive sessions of ninety minutes for each using TBI with the experimental group and 3Ps with the control group. Willis’s (1996) TBI framework was adapted in this study to suit its purpose then used to teach TBI lesson plans. The eighteen communicative tasks taught throughout the treatment were selected from students’ textbook, and
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they included one listing task, one information-gap task, two ordering tasks, two reasoning-gap tasks, three matching tasks, four opinion-gap tasks and five dialogue tasks. The same content of textbook was also studied by the control group but based on the PPP lesson format. To ensure the validity of the lesson plans, they were reviewed by three external judges specialized in curriculum development and language assessment.
Adapting the TBI framework by Willis (1996), the TBI framework consisted of five stages; the first stage of which was the opening stage in which the teacher imposed discipline and checked attendance. The second stage was the pre-task stage in which the teacher made an introduction to the topic and to the task. The third stage was the task cycle in which the teacher assigned students to work on the given tasks and gave them time to prepare for their speech and asked some students to present the task whether in spoken or written forms. The fourth stage was the language focus stage in which the teacher focused on some linguistic features from students’ speeches or other linguistic features thought to be important by the teacher and then asked the students to practice them in controlled/ free contexts. The last stage was the closing stage in which the teacher asked some confirmation/ comprehension/ reflection questions and assigned students’ homework.
On the other hand, the 3Ps framework consisted of three stages; the first stage of which was the presentation stage in which the teacher introduced the topic, explained the meaning of some new words, and exposed, presented and checked students’ comprehension of the new linguistic features. The second stage was the practice stage in which the teacher asked the students to practice the already learned linguistic features through some drills and controlled practices. The third stage was the production stage in which the teacher asked the students to use
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the language they learned during the first two stages in their speaking through free practice contexts.
As for the pre-post tests, they were organized following the Cambridge English’s (2011) speaking test format; that is, the participants were tested in pairs but their performances were assessed separately. The participants’ speaking performances were scored by two independent raters and whose scores were subject to inter-rater reliability test using Pearson coefficient analysis to ensure the reliability of the test results (r = 0.80). The speaking rubric was adapted from Cambridge English (2011) and Ulster University (2018) and used to measure five speaking sub-skills at the same time (fluency, interaction, pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary).
The results from this study showed that the experimental group outperformed the control group on overall speaking skill and on all speaking sub-skills to a significant degree, demonstrating the superiority of TBI over 3Ps in enhancing L2 students’ oral production of the target language. Moreover, the results exhibited that the experimental group was satisfied with the adoption of TBI in the classroom as it increased their confidence and self-reliance, triggered them to speak through group work, offered them the exposure to the target language, created an enjoyable environment for learning, helped them retain grammar and vocabulary and enabled them to interact more and speak faster.
Adding more interesting results from the reviewed studies, the results from the two studies by Bygate (1999) and Newton and Kennedy (1996) revealed that TBI was also effective in developing other linguistic features and structures; such as students’ grammatical, discourse and pragmatic competence during their interaction. The results of the two studies by Kirkgöz (2011) and Mulyadi et al. (2021) showed that the use of technology in TBI classes enhanced students’ speaking performance, suggesting the use of modern technology with TBI to better
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implement TBI in the classroom context and then students’ better speaking performance. The findings from the studies by Afifah and Devana (2020), Akalu (2020), Darrashiri and Mazdayasna (2021), Safitri, Rafli and Dewanti (2019) and Xuyen and Trang (2021) showed the positive attitudes of students towards the implementation of TBI to improve their speaking skills as it created an anxiety-free communicative environment for them to express ideas, to negotiate language meaning and form and to evaluate their learning. Adding further reasons for their positive attitudes towards TBI, the participating students commented that TBI was motivational and challenging in the classroom as it provided students with opportunities to do the task on their own and to perform it in front of the class under the full supervision of their teachers.
However, despite showing an improvement in students’ speaking performance on the post-test scores, the results of the study by Alikahi and Kiany (2021) indicated no significant difference between the two investigated groups after both TBI and the critical pedagogy based teaching strategy were assigned, suggesting the equal effect of both teaching strategies on students’ speaking performance. Finally, the results from study conducted by Farahani and Nejad (2009) demonstrated that students’ gender was not a determining factor in students’
speaking development under the TBI approach.
Adding another dimension to the positive impact of TBI on students’ production of the target language, Plonsky and Kim (2016) aimed to get insight into the features most associated with the implementation of TBI to ensure best TBI practices in the classroom. The study was a synthesis and meta-analysis study in which the researchers analyzed a plethora of studies (about 85 studies) published from 2006 to 2015 with particular interest in exploring the features affecting the successful application of TBI to promote students’ production of the target language. It did not look into the effect sizes and the difference in students’ performance after
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treatments as most of meta-analysis studies did, but rather it researched the most overarching and methodological features associated with TBI implementation. This included target features;
such as fluency, accuracy, complexity, lexis, pragmatics, pronunciation, task performance quality and grammar, methodological features; such as needs analysis, sampling, reporting practices and study designs, and other demographic and contextual features; such as participants’ demographic information and the contexts where different studies were conducted.
The research materials were basically 85 published studies searched for by the researchers using three databases: Google search engine, Google Scholar and Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA). The research data was analyzed in three different ways based on the research questions. Some data were analyzed by calculating the frequencies and percentages of the intended features. Some other data was analyzed by calculating the central tendency of continuously measured features such as research samples. The rest of data was analyzed by calculating score means, standard deviation and confidence intervals of multiple target features.
The most important findings from this study were: (1) the preference of investigating certain target features such as accuracy, vocabulary, fluency, grammar, and the little tendency towards the probe into pragmatics, pronunciation and the quality of students’ performance on tasks, (2) a strong propensity towards research on adult students, (3) the majority of researchers preferred to conduct their studies on intermediate students but without providing clear justification on students’ current proficiency levels as determined by international tests (e.g., IELTS tests, TOEFL tests, etc.), (4) most of experiments were conducted in classroom settings not labs, (5) most of studies were conducted on students at university level, (6) the majority of studies investigated oral language production rather than written language production using
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face-to-face tasks not computer-mediated communicative tasks, (7) the use of manual technique rather than computer-based technique for coding students’ language production, and (8) the use of ANOVA test and t-test as major statistical analyses of TBI-related studies.
The study by In’nami and Koizumi (2016) was appealing in the way it added rater factors to task factors in their investigation into the impact of TBI on students’ production of the target language. It synthesized the results of 38 studies (17 studies on L2 writing and 21 studies on L2 speaking) and used the generalizability theory as a theoretical foundation to pinpoint the percentage of variation in students’ L2 speaking and writing performance based on tasks, raters and their interaction. The research materials were accessed through three ways; (1) the internet search on databases, (2) the published books and journals in the area of L2 acquisition and testing, and (3) communication with other researchers on the most relevant studies.
The data was analyzed in three phases; the researchers first coded the results related to both person-by-task and person-by-rater designs, then they coded the values of variance components from the studies. This was followed by the computation of means and standard deviations of the percentage of variation in students’ L2 speaking and writing performance for each moderator variable; task types, contexts, and scoring, enabling them to identify the link between moderator variables and the percentages.
It was found that, (1) interaction effects of tasks or raters were much higher than the independent effects of tasks or raters, (2) the score variances were significantly largely ascribed to the task and task-related interaction effects rather than to the rater and rater-related interaction effects, (3) increasing the number of tasks or raters resulted in high score generalizability, and (4) certain factors such as scoring criteria, scoring methods and contexts influenced students’
speaking performance on tasks.
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