The 9th International Conference on English Language Teaching (ELT) In China (ELT2020)

Learner autonomy is an important facet of teaching English as second language, which teachers seek to realize in a number of different ways. This paper show how Wechat group--an online social platform--can be used to facilitate first-year college students from an international business school in Shanghai to improve speaking confidence and fluency building.

Noting that some students are under stress in an all-English classroom setting, and they are often unwilling and unconfident to speak in classroom because of their prior learning experience, a 9-week Wechat group is organized to help these students foster their speaking output. Meanwhile, this community is open to all the students as a college English activity program. The 25 participants join this research willingly, including 10 first-year students, 15 junior and senior students with a mixed level of speaking competence.

In this action research, the teacher becomes less of an instructor and more of a facilitator.The analysis of students’ needs, introducing and modeling pronunciation and speaking strategies for independent learning and regular consultation are used to help learners plan for their own leaning,developing learner autonomy.

The results from students audio and feedback reveals that the speaking fluency of the first-year students increased in some areas as shown by the improvement on their speaking at length and pronunciation accuracy. The data shows speaking confidence greatly is improved for first-year students. Thy also show that teacher’s support and peer communication in this online learning community influence students’ motivation to submit speaking recording positively.

 

online learning community; First-year college students; learner autonmy; speaking output