Enhancing Students’ Speaking Skill Through the Use of Project Work: The Case of Third Year Secondary School EFL Students in Tizi-Ouzou.

Abstract

The present work is concerned with the development of the speaking skill through project work. It attempts to discover the role of project work integrated in New Prospects secondary school third year EFL textbook in improving students’ speaking ability since the primary aim of learning any foreign language is to use it in communication. The research is conducted in both secondary schools of “Djebla” in Ouaguenoun and “Moussaoui Mouhamed” in Ait Yahia Moussa in the wilaya of Tiziouzou (Algeria)relying on Stollers’ model of project work (1997). Our investigation is based on mixed methods research, which combine both quantitative and qualitative methods. A questionnaire as a research tool is distributed to thirteen students in both schools and ten sessions of classroom observation are conducted for the sake of gathering more data and support of the data collected through the questionnaire relying on a checklist adopted from Penny Ur (1996). SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) is used for statistical data analysis while Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA) is used to interpret the results of the open-ended questions and classroom observation sessions). Based on the study results, it is concluded that students’ speaking skill could be developed through project work, but the projects integrated in New Prospects are meant to develop students’ writing skill since the “Baccalaureate” exam format is conceived in the written mode.