Empirical evidence on the effectiveness of the learning by teaching technique among university-level english as a foreign language students

Abstract

Learning via teaching has been accepted as one of the best ways to achieve a deep understanding of a topic. This research was aimed at seeking scientific evidence to support this claim by comparing the scores the university-level EFL students obtained through the learning by teaching technique and those obtained by students who were taught traditionally using a teacher-centered approach. The experimental group consisted of 22 students who were taught pedagogical content knowledge, i.e. English Language Testing, traditionally for half of the semester and then teaching students at another university afterward. The control group consisted of 24 students who were taught language testing traditionally by the same instructor for the whole semester. Both groups were given a test to measure their content knowledge achievement; one test at the beginning of the semester and one at the end of the semester. Two-way ANOVA was used to compare the two groups' scores, and find out how the differences in the scores was affected by the type of instruction. The results showed that there was significant evidence that the students' scores improved significantly in both groups. However, the difference in test scores between pre-test and post-test did not depend on the type of instruction. Because the experimental group could achieve the same performance as those of the control group regardless of the shorter instruction period, it can be concluded that learning by teaching has potential as an effective method for teaching pedagogical content knowledge. Suggestions for possible modifications of this technique are discussed in this paper.