Using Local Culture to Develop University Students English Oral Proficiency Skills

Abstract

This paper aims to achieve three objectives: to compare students’ performance before and after culture-integrated lessons; to investigate the development of students’ speaking skills; and to explore students’ attitudes toward the teaching model. This quasi-experimental research was conducted with one group who completed a pre- and post-test along with classroom observation and interviews. Participants were 22 students majoring in English in the Faculty of Education, Valaya Alongkorn Rajabhat University in Thailand. The results revealed that there was a statistically significant improvement between the mean scores of pre- and post-tests (t=-6.59, p=0.00). In the class, students were exposed to wide range of vocabulary, grammar structure and pronunciation correction. The overall attitudes of the participants toward this innovative approach were very positive. Accordingly, Planning, Presentation, Discussion (PPD) is posited to be another technique which can be applied in the teaching of English speaking skills. The main task given to students is presentation which they need to plan in advance. After the presentation, the learning of the target language is focused on discussing the content and language features from the speech. This study implicates that a structured approach such as in PPD is needed to assist students in noticing the forms, content and features of the target language.