Oral Participation in Class - Admission/Application Essay Example

Dis analysis Oral participation in What contributes to it and what relationship does it have to language development? Class participation is a way through which the teachers evaluate the appearance of students in the education process. It also helps in strengthening the students-teacher relation and bringing in liveliness into the classroom. Oral participation is considered to be a significant aspect for the students of English language training. This paper represents an analysis of the factors that influence oral participation in a foreign language class and its relations with English language development. During the last year, there has been a lot more emphasis on the benefits associated with participation of students in class discussion. Active students’ participation in classroom also points towards their effective learning ability and their personal expansion in professional life. Students who are actively participating in class are reported to have higher persistence and higher satisfaction. It is important to explore class participation from the perspective of a student, as it a source of providing firsthand knowledge about their perception and feelings. The perceptions and feelings of the students can be strongly associated with their own experience of class participation. There is a need of making different requirements between evaluating class participation such as dialogues and evaluating a structured task such as a debate. There is no doubt about the fact that the academic success in the classroom of foreign language is based on their oral presentation in class. Many foreign teachers consider it a struggle to make the foreign language in a way so a motivating students in oral participation (Guccione, 2012). There are a variety of factors identified which play a part in encouraging or discouraging students in oral participation. These factors can be the gender differences, student’s age, their particular ethnicity, student’s willingness and motivation to talk, their interest in topic, their emotions like fear or confidence, student-teacher relations, class size, etc. that play important role in oral participation and academic achievement of a student. Research suggests that many students experience the foreign language anxiety in the language learning class that has negatively impacted their performance in the class. There are also some environmental factors such as classroom traits, lecture traits, physical setting and engaging classroom content. Group work and pair work is considered to be important for learner-learner interactions, as it helps in facilitating language development. Language classrooms can be a source of providing discourse communities and sociolinguistic environment in which interaction between the learners contributes towards their language development. This is why language is considered to be a wonderful gift that enables people providing new ways for people to speak on different issues. Language in itself is a meaningful communication system. Oral language is considered to be the main medium of communication between the people, even when their writing skills are fully developed. It is also considered to be an important linkage between the life pace and environment. The most common issue identified by students during their English Language Training is their inability to participate in class or in casual conversation with their classmate because of their ineffective oral communication skills. Despite of all the significance being assigned to oral participation in the classroom, it has been reported that many students choose to remain passive in the classroom. It has been proved that the students who actively participate in the class are more academically successful than the ones who act passively. In general, oral participation as an observable behavior is of great significance, as it is considered to be a linguistic source leading towards expressiveness(Michael & Guccione, 2009). Classroom participation can be divided into two dimensions which are oral participation and non-oral participation. In the first dimension, the student participates in the class, answer and asks questions and makes comments. The students who do not behave like this are considered to be passive and are penalized by teachers when participation is being graded. Successfully the acquisition of second language is based on obtaining feedback about the usage of second language, which allows the students to take the help of their teachers and peers in improving their language. The participation of the learner can be modified or improved by the reforms of oral feedback and language error. In a classroom the students ask question and the teacher answer it or vice versa and in such settings the teacher may also participate in learning activities along with the students. In a recent study it was found that most of the students do not like to participate in the activities that expose them to the questioning of the teacher but they would rather participate in activities that allow them to work in pairs or groups. It is certain that the teacher’s talk take more proportion of the entire classroom talk, representing two-third of the dialogues in the classroom. The talk time of the teacher occupies almost 60-70 percent of the classroom session, therefore having a supportive relationship with the teacher help students to build asense of belonging, that impose a positive effect on the student’s achievement, self-efficacy, effort and long term goals. Other type of effective relationship is the learner-learner interaction that occurs between the learners. In such a relationship the learners are the main participants; whereas the role of a teacher is just limited to monitoring. Therefore from this discussion it can be inferred that cooperate exercise should make the development of language easy for the learners. It has been proposed by Harmer that the practice in pairs increases the amount of time that is available to every learner in the classroom. There are many studies that point towards limited educational facility being a factor that limit the performance of students’ oral participation in the foreign language class, giving rise to self-consciousness, insecurity and low ability to speak in front of the peers. The classroom where the cluster of students has behavioral problems is not considered safe physically, emotionally or socially and it imposes negative affect on the motivation of students. The researcher argues that there are many factors on which the tendency of learners to participate in the class arguments depends. These factors can be divided into three traits which are class traits, student traits and teacher’s traits. Class traits are based on emotional climate and interaction norms, where the student’s traits can be further divided into preparation, confidence and intimidation. The third and the final trait can be linked to supportiveness and approachability and also on whether or not the teacher encourages discussion(Aidinlou & Ghobadi, 2012). Beside the ones discussed above, some other factors have been identified that influence the oral participation of the students. These factors can also be divided into four categories which are student/learner factor, social factor or pedagogical/educational factors. Views and perception, tendencies of learners, their background and learning styles are all example of students factors. The social factors are based on the feeling of nature community in a group and the gender of students; whereas the educational or pedagogical factors is based on the course of training, lecturer, subject of discussion and the nature of queries. In the educational factor oral presentation is considered to be the part of evaluation, size of class, peer’s support and help, the way of conducting lessons and teacher’s encouragement. It has been proved that the approach adopted by the teacher in the class room affects the participation of students. It has also been observed the learners are attracted towards easy discussions and they contribute more in group dialogues than the discussions conducted between the whole-class. It is found that the students centered class fosters more discussions than a teacher centered class. Some female learners feel reluctant to participate in class discussion because of the fear of being criticized and scolded by the teacher or by any of the peers. In fact when a female student participates in any discussion they are actually risking being treated with disrespect in front of the whole class. Anxiety contributes as a negative factor, as it is more associated with the oral participation of the learners. All the listed factors eventually can be applied to the student’s communicative competence and linguistic capabilities. The analysis of factors displays the value of participation of learners in the language class. The language development can only change if the student’s oral participation increases in class. Educational facilities are considered to be the significant parameters in determining the oral participation variability. Factors such as class traits, learner’s traits and teacher’s traits all contribute to some level of student’s participation in the class. It can be concluded from the above discussion that if the environment provided by the teacher is not accepting and friendly, then the students will no longer progress in the development of knowledge. For fostering oral participation the learners have to be aware of all the factors that can affect their participation ability. The teachers must also be aware of the factors, as it is then that they will be able to encourage the students to effectively participate in discussions. It is the cumulative efforts of the students and teachers that will help the students in language development through oral participation. References Aidinlou, N. A., & Ghobadi, S. (2012). Examination of Relationships between Factors Affecting on Oral Participation of ELT Students and Language Development: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach. International Journal of English Linguistics. Guccione, L. M. (2012). Oral Language Development and ELLs: 5 Challenges and Solutions. Retrieved October 13, 2014, from http://www.colorincolorado.org/article/50910/ Michael, O., & Guccione, L. M. (2009). 25 oral reading strategies that cross proficiency levels. Heinemann. Comprehension and English language learners. Read More