Flip your classroom to improve EFL students' speaking skills

Abstract

As the use of flipped teaching spreads throughout educational disciplines, teachers who teach English as a foreign language (EFL) need to consider its potential for our field. This chapter, framed within constructivist pedagogy, synthesizes an example of flip teaching that clearly demonstrates the benefits of flipping the classroom in improving EFL students' speaking skills. I also showed how flipped learning provides opportunities for increased academic success. It is suggested that a spoken class can be flipped by shifting students from passive to active learning and emphasizing the role university teachers play in facilitating students' engagement with speaking. Interviews also showed that students were more satisfied with the flipped classroom method. Through this example of how flipped learning can take shape in a cross-cultural communication course, this chapter concludes with a consideration of both the benefits and the challenges pertaining to this approach for EFL teaching and learning.