Explicit Affective Strategy Instruction to Develop Speaking Performance of Egyptian EFL University Students

Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the effect of explicit affective strategy instruction on the speaking performance of Freshmen English majors at Faculty of Education, Suez University, Egypt. The design of the study is a pre-post quasi experimental one. The instrument is a pre/post speaking performance test (designed by the researcher). Participants were eighty Freshmen English majors, randomly divided into two groups: a control group (N=40) and an experimental one (N=40). During the experiment, the experimental group was explicitly taught some affective strategies (lowering anxiety, encouraging yourself and monitoring emotions) while the control group was taught using the traditional method. All participants were tested using the pre/post speaking performance test before and after the intervention. The difference between the post test’s mean scores of the control and experimental groups were calculated using Independent Samples t-test and the difference in the mean scores between the pre- and post tests of speaking performance was calculated for each group separately using Paired Samples t-test. A significant difference was found between the post test’s mean scores of the control and the experimental groups in favor of the experimental group. Moreover, a significant difference was found between the mean scores of the pre and post test of the experimental group in favor of the post test. It was concluded that participants’ level of speaking performance significantly improved after receiving the explicit affective strategy instruction.