Using Animated Films to Develop the Speaking Skills of Student Teachers of English in the Light of the Communicative Approach

Abstract

The current study investigated the effect of a designed program based on animated films to develop third-year English student teachers' speaking skills. The participants of the study were a group of thirty English student teachers at Faculty of Women for Arts, Science and Education, Ain Shams University. The required verbal and non-verbal speaking skills for the experimental group were identified and approved by a jury of EFL and linguistics spe-cialists. The treatment lasted approximately for one semester and followed one group pre-posttest design in which the researcher employed both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Tools included, a pre-post speaking test, two rubrics for measuring the verbal and non-verbal speaking skills and finally a follow-up questionnaire. The results showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the results of the pre and posttest in favor of the posttest, which indicates the effectiveness of the treatment. The designed pro-gram showed a large effect size of (0.91) and effectiveness ratio of (1.23) developing the verbal and non-verbal speaking skills of participants. The study has proven to have a posi-tive effect on developing the verbal speaking skills of student teachers in general, as well as its sub-skills including; phonetic skills, lexical skills, grammatical skills, fluency and accuracy. In addition, the study showed a positive impact on developing the overall non-verbal speaking skills, as well as its sub-skills including; eye-contact, body language, facial expressions and gestures.

Keywords: verbal speaking skills, non-verbal speaking skills, communicative approach, and animated films.