The Balanced Approach versus Classroom Dialogues for Oral English Proficiency

Abstract

This study determined the effect of classroom dialogues on the oral English proficiency of Teacher Education students. Respondents from heterogenous grouping were tested on fluency and coherence, lexical resource, grammar, and pronunciation. Lessons for the Experimental group were aligned with Nick Bilbrough’s (2007) dialogue activities while the Control group used the Balanced Approach. Pre-test results showed a very small mean difference in the level of proficiency of all respondents. They were less proficient in the four criteria with the experimental group having a higher overall mean than the control group. Post test results showed an increase in proficiency levels. The experimental group edged over the control group with a high post test means score. However, pre-post mean difference showed a higher mean increase of the control group than the experimental. There was a significant difference in the proficiency levels of the two groups.The study concludes that classroom dialogues helped improve the students’ proficiency levels in spoken English. Lesson designs in all subject areas should, therefore, include dialogue activities to encourage a highly interactive language environment and to increase students’ exposure to the English language. Keywords – Education, Balanced Approach, Classroom Dialogues, Oral English proficiency, Dialogue Tasks, descriptive research,Surigao del Sur, Philippines