Is Students' Mini-Lecture An Effective Strategy to Learn English?

Abstract

In most general and special English courses of the Iranian universities, reading comprehension is the main component of the syllabus. Nonetheless, in an attempt to improve listening and speaking skills, some general English courses were accompanied by oral presentations, according to which each student had to give a lecture lasting for nearly 10 minutes. The main objective was to investigate the effect of a 10-minute oral presentation on students' linguistic skills, in a comprehension-oriented syllabus. As such, two linguistically homogeneous general English classes were selected. Students in both classes were taught by the same English teacher, using the same textbook and syllabus, which, as usual, focused on reading comprehension. In one class (group 1) a 10-minute lecture, using a Power-point slide presentation software, was included in the syllabus whereas in the other class (group 2) the usual no-lecture syllabus was followed.  At the beginning of the semester, both groups took a pretest composed of a set of reading comprehension, listening comprehension, vocabulary and grammar items, and at the semester end they sat for a posttest, which was similar to the pretest. The results of the two tests were then compared using the student t-test. Comparison of the mean scores on reading comprehension, listening comprehension, vocabulary and grammar, for the pre-test and post-test,  showed no significant differences between the two groups although score gains on listening comprehension for the first group was noticeable.  The conclusion may be that mini-lectures in a reading comprehension-oriented syllabus can improve students' listening comprehension although the level of improvement may not be so significant.