Many teachers strive for lively student participation in class. This field study examined aspects of learning environments in higher education with regard to their connection with students' oral engagement. Overall, six factors that might increase or decrease oral participation were investigated: the number of teacher questions, course atmosphere,…

This article is an exploration of a current practice implementing civic engagement in the general education curriculum. At the university examined in this article, all students complete a civic engagement requirement in the oral communication course. The authors provide justification for why institutional initiatives are not enough to accomplish…

Speaking is regarded as an indicator of language proficiency in general. It is believed that a learner who can speak a particular language fluently is regarded as a proficient learner of that language. In the context of Nepal, the English language is taken as a foreign language and taught from elementary level to university level as a compulsory…

The basic business statistics course is ideal for incorporating multiple objectives related to program learning goals common at most business schools. Along with quantitative reasoning skills, activities are described that allow the measurement of student outcomes related to oral communication and ethics. Strategies include the hidden curriculum…

This article examines the use of technology-mediated, task-based language teaching (TBLT) in a hybrid environment as an instructional approach in an intermediate-level Spanish course. It (a) evaluates elements of a hybrid course that was developed with computer-assisted language learning (CALL) materials to help learners improve their Spanish,…

The aim of this mixed methods study is to identify the underlying structure of the construct of Foreign Language Anxiety in integrated listening-to-speak tasks. First, the analysis of the qualitative interviews with six postsecondary ESL learners reveals that anxiety for integrated speaking stems from four different factors: "listening,"…

It is rare for learners to reach high level of communicative ability from engaging in entirely language form either implicitly or explicitly. Likewise, focusing primarily on content may be a hindrance to embrace target language features. The integration of form-focused instruction in content-based classrooms has been effective because such an…

This study investigates how second language (L2) fluency is influenced by two factors: Pre-task planning and content familiarity. Planning was adopted as a between-participant variable, combined with content familiarity as a within-participant variable, in a 2 × 2 split-plot factorial design. Nineteen measures of fluency phenomena, constituting…

The aim of the present study is to examine the effects of integrating Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) on the motivation of students learning English in a preparatory school at a private university in Istanbul, Turkey. The study also attempts to find out how the students and their instructor perceive teaching and learning English…

This study aimed to explore teachers' and students' perception of pronunciation teaching in Indonesian EFL classrooms, particularly on (1) the difficulty of English pronunciation, (2) the reasons for the difficulty, (3) the inclusion of pronunciation in EFL classrooms, (4) the goal of pronunciation teaching, (5) priorities in pronunciation…

An examination of oral communication education in the United States (U.S.) and United Kingdom (U.K.) identified four critical concerns: (1) Today's college students are not getting adequate oral communication education; (2) Oral communication education is being relegated to a "module" in another discipline-specific course; (3) When an…

The experience of teaching informal logic (sometimes called practical logic) at the introductory level over the last fifteen years has allowed the author the opportunity to identify some interesting problems. These problems have been encountered by students attempting to understand some of the ideas presented in the informal logic course and by…

Research attention in English for academic purposes has generally been more focused on written than spoken genres, but there is growing interest in the value of speaking for learning, as well as recognition of its significance for students themselves. This article reports on one-to-one interactions between undergraduate students and teaching staff…

Dismissed as a passive behavior that comes naturally, listening is, in fact, a complex and learned activity that can be perfected. Like reading, writing, and speaking, listening as a practical activity is critical for success in college life and beyond. But while rhetoric as the art of speaking has been a basic course in higher education for…

In this article, the author describes how she changed her process for the oral presentation, which involved looking at its placement in the course, the pace, and the preparation. By moving the team oral presentation earlier in the course, the author hoped to solve two problems. One problem was the increased stress both students and the author…