Constraints in Spoken Proficiency: Causes and Remedial Measures

Abstract

Spoken proficiency in English has become indispensable in engineering industry. It is expected of an engineering student to possess requisite spoken proficiency for his/her career growth prospects. The paper focuses on the impediments in the speaking skills of the engineering students and also finds the ways to improve students' speaking skills using task-based pedagogical design. The article further investigates the factors that affect the speaking performance of the ESL learners. This article explores the pivotal role played by the pedagogical intervention in the classroom in enabling the learners to overcome the constraints in speaking. The participants of the study chosen for control and experimental group were first year civil engineering students comprising 38 in each group respectively. T-test was used to compare the performance of the students in control and experiment groups. The cross tabulation was also computed to know the scoring pattern of the spoken components in the assigned tasks. The results revealed that there was a significant level of improvement in the oral proficiency of the experimental group.