Impact of Icebreaker Tasks on ESL Speaking Ability

Impact of Icesurf Tasks on ESL Speaking AbilityCHAPTERBackground and PurposeIntroductionSpeaking is the to the highest degree demanding accomplishment among English learners and over the past decades, increasing interest in different aspects of improving address ability has triggered a variety of investigations, and theoretical discussions that have regorge light on improving this ability. Icebreakers allow for be utilise in this pick out to improve pronounceing ability in gr bear upper-intermediate EFL learners. Ice severance means breaking the ice between learners and using ice breakers to encourage students to interact all together.Statement of ProblemThe lack of proper speaking activities to improve oral production in adult EFL students of upper-intermediate level, results in a poor performance when speaking. This project expects to find valuable information that contributes to overcome the problems adult EFL students of upper-intermediate level face when speaking in th e target language in the kinspersonroom.Theoretical FrameworkSpeaking skill is as crucial as both other language skills. Shumin (1997) states that learning to speak a foreign language requires more than knowing its grammar and vocabulary. Learners should acquire the skill through interaction with each other. However, it is touchy for EFL learners to speak appropriate English in the classroom because of the limited language use in their real lives.Ice breakers are discussion questions or interaction activities used to help participants relax and ease in learning situation (Dover, 2004). The primary goal for an ice breaker is the development of an environment that is disturbance reducing and, which allows individuals to break the ice or get acquainted with having fun.Pillai (2007) mentions the purpose of ice breakers as helping new and shy students strike a conversation, developing communication skills and team building, breaking cultural barriers among students, promoting a sense of trust and friendship between students, encouraging students, and preparing them to learn by stimulating their minds and/or their bodies.Forbes-Greene (1984) defines icebreakers as tools that enable students to foster interaction, encourage creative thinking, challenge basic assumptions, explain new concepts, and introduce specific material. According to Varvel (2002) ice breaker is an action mechanism used to help individual ease into the group setting. Also, Wright (1999) defines ice breaker as open uping communication among students as between teacher and students.Jenkins (2011) argues that ice breaker should be dynamic and simple so as to satisfy students need to establish an appropriate social relationship with other students and teachers and also preview the mood and content of the classroom event.According to Sapp (2007) principles of successful ice breakers are as followsSimpleNon-threateningOpen endedRelevantEnergizingWitkowski (2000) states that some elements should b e considered in designing an appropriate ice breaker in the classroom. He listed these elements as followObjectiveAudienceTime managementControlAs a matter of fact, we can say that how well students do in class depends mostly on how well teacher breaks the ice between them. From this station of view, English teachers should reconsider the methodology they can apply in their classes and try to improve their teaching ability.Purpose of the submitIn terms of skills, producing a lucid and fluent piece of speech is probably the most serious thing there is to do between EFL learners. The present adopt checks ice breaking tasks as activities that presumed to play a role in EFL speaking classes. The first question this study tries to answer is whether or not providing students with ice braking tasks as their classroom activities entrust exert every impact on their speaking skill. According to Peterson (2010), beginning your lesson plans with a five-minute ice breaker can serve to foc us your students on the topic, open up creative thinking and help them to apply the learning in new ways. According to Leblanc (2011) ice breaking activities will help students to turn gain the outside world and focus on the task at hand. By the end of the ice breaking activity, every student will be organise to learn and being able to focus on their language lesson. Then, a teacher will reach every student and will help their students extend to their language goals.In any classroom, there always are students who are more reticent and are willing to let others do all the participating. By engaging students to take part in a low-risk, ice-breaking activity, teachers will reach every student and will help their students achieve their language goals.Based on the problems and purpose of study, the following research questions were proposedDoes providing students with ice- breaking tasks have any effect on their speaking ability?To what extent ice-breakers improve speaking?What factor s can be considered in test speaking ability of EFL learners?What is the effect of using ice-breakers in improving every factor that considered in testing learners speaking ability?What is the correlational statistics between using ice-breaker activities and students gender?When teachers use ice- breaking as a strategy to improve oral ability in English classrooms?1.5. Significance of the StudyIn the age of internet and information technology, speaking English has become so important and many EFL instructors and supervisors understand the essence of the speaking process. Learning to speak English fluently is important to most of the students. Thus, helping students to develop speaking skills is a demanding enterprise for teachers. Using a good ice breaker is important to an English language lesson, as it sets the students up for success on many different levels.According to Flanigan (2011) performing ice breaking activities in English class will help students be in the right frame of mind to learn. Also proper ice breaking activities ensure that students will get the most from their class and they will have fun.1.6. Research Design and Methodology1.6.1. Research DesignSince real random selection of the subjects is impossible, the researcher made use of full groups based on the results of students previous general English test scores. Therefore the design which can fit this study is the quasi-experimental design with the pre-test, post-test pattern.In the current study ice breakers are the independent variable and speaking is the dependent variable. Thus the effectiveness of ice breakers, the amount of improvement, factors that can be considered in testing speaking ability, and effect of using icebreakers in every factor will be analyzed quantitatively by info analysis of pre-test and post-test, and qualitatively by analyzing teachers view point about the usefulness of ice-breakers.1.6.2. Setting and ParticipantsAfter administering the sample speaking IELTS test, on the basis of the result, 100 students, whose homogeneities is confirmed-will be selected and divided into two groups ,one as the control group and the other one as the experimental group. Coming from different departments such as Science, History, Literature, Computer Science and Civil Engineering, Both groups will attend English classes two times a week throughout the semester (about 18 sessions, 3hours each session).1.6.3. Data Collection InstrumentsFor collecting data, two instruments have been used in this study. The first ones are different kind of ice breakers that have been gathered from related standard sources. The second instrument is interview with teachers. As we will explain latter, it will elaborate in cabaret to identify some aspects related to the teachers point of view about the usefulness of ice-breakers in upper-mediate level, and the students answer to these kinds of activities.1.6.4. Data AnalysisAs it was mentioned earlier, there is a six fold purpo se that will promote the present study. This research is mainly an attempt (a) to understand the probable effect of ice breakers on the speaking ability of EFL students at upper-intermediate language proficiency level, (b) to investigate the amount of ice breakers effect, (c) to investigate factors that are considered in testing speaking (d) study the effect of using ice-breakers in improving every factor,(e) measure the correlation between using ice-breaker activities and students gender,and (f) the conditions in which the teachers use ice breakers to cope with reticence in oral English language classrooms.Data for this study obtained from pre-test, post-test, and interview with teachers. Then in order to do statistical analysis, the SPSS software is used.1.7. Limitation and Delimitations of the Study1.7.1. LimitationsAs many other studies, this study suffers from some limitations, those conditions beyond the control of the researcher that may bulge out restrictions on the conclu sions of the study and their application to other situations (Best Kahn, 1989, p.38). It seems that the following factors have limited this study in one way or another1. As a matter of fact, in order to give every single member of a population an equal chance to be included in the sample, random sampling is needed. Yet the type of sampling, which was employed in this study was the available group selection, i.e.instead of individual subject selection, there was group selection.2. Subjects social classes were sure as shooting ignored as well.3. Teachers age, gender, and social class were ignored, too.4. The number of subjects was limited to 100 and the extension of the experiment was limited to one term.5. The generalizability to other language proficiency levels ask further research.1.7.2. DelimitationIn order to meet the criterion of manageability and to permit a satisfactory analysis of the results, narrowing down and delimiting the problems in any study have proved to be inevi table. This study is no exception therefore, through a number of delimitations, the researcher tried to set the boundaries of this study1. What this study aims to investigate is the impact of ice-breakers on speaking ability of EFL Turkish students, not on any other aspect of their proficiency.2. The participants were chosen from amongst the male and female undergrad Turkish learners who are improving their English level in the American Culture Institute in Erzurum.3. To reduce the subject anxiety during the speaking, the examiner was the students own teacher.1.8. Outline of the StudyChapter one provides a general introduction to the study. In this chapter the purpose of the study, research questions, hypotheses, and limitations of the study were discussed and key terms were defined. In chapter two, the researcher reviews the writings related to the theoretical and empirical background to speaking, ice-breakers, and their effects and functions. Chapter three deals with methodologi cal issues such as participants, data collection, procedures, research questions and hypotheses, etc. Chapter four is concerned with data analysis and discussion of the results. In the final chapter, we draw some conclusions from our analysis, discuss conclusive results, and provide implications for further research.