Investigating Strategies to Improve English Oral Communication Skills Among Undergrads at Mehran UET, Jamshoro

Abstract

An Oral Communication (OC) plays a significant role in our day-to-day life. It has been considered as a life changing tool of the conversation. In academia,it is given a primary importance. (OC) is a two-dimensional work and it includes both listening and speaking simultaneously. This paper aims to investigate strategies, impacting students’ oral English communication performance and to make them effective and fluent speaker of English language.In this thesis, the researcher introduced many strategies to help students to improve their speaking skills of English language which actually comprises oral communication. First the study attempted to develop the questionnaire for statistical analysis named strategies for oral communication which was then classified as strategies for speaking skills. There were nine strategies of speaking. The research project was based on close-ended questionnaire for speaking and composed in a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 strongly agree (SA) 2 agree (A) 3 Neutral (N) 4 strongly disagree (SD) 5 disagree (D).The target population for this study were the 132 students of Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, Jamshoro, Sindh. The research contains sequential mixed method for the collection of data that is based on both quantitative data, that was collected from students through questionnaire and the qualitative data that was collected from 5 English language teachers of MUET, Jamshoro.  The data was analyzed in grand percentage, mean and standard deviations. To validate the use of the instrument, participant reports on the Strategy for oral communication were compared with the result of the OCS. It was revealed that students with high or low oral proficiency tended to use these particular strategies, such as social affective strategies, fluency-oriented strategies, negotiation of meaning and etc.Some of these strategies can directly influence their effectiveness of learning communication skills of English, but some do not have direct influence on oralcommunication skills of English. Understanding these strategies and their impact would enable both instructors and students to improve their teaching, learning environment as well as methodology. Keywords: Communication Strategies, survey research (sequential mixed method), speaking skills, high proficiency, and low proficiency. Investigating Strategies to improve English oral Communication skills among undergrads at Mehran UET, Jamshoro DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/79-05 Publication date: May 31 st 2021