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CHPATER ONE INTRODUCTION 1.0 Introduction
The introduction section provides an overview of the present study, including background of the study, the purpose of conducting the study, and two research questions.
1.1 Background and Rationale of the Study
Nowadays, there has been an increasing popularity in English learning in Taiwan (Krashen, 2003). Due to the effect of internationalization and globalization, English has been widely recognized as a global language for international
communication (Chen & Hsieh, 2011). Also, it has been viewed as a valued resource that enables learners to have the upward mobility and gain access to a higher
socio-economic group via employment. Thus, having a good command of English is not only a symbolic and economic capital but also an unstated qualification for a person’s success (Pan & Block, 2011).
In particular, to have a better capacity for international communication, oral proficiency in English is an essential prerequisite for seeking employment in job marketing in the twenty-first century (Hadley & Reiken, 2001). The importance of English speaking is also based on linguistic theories. For example, in first language acquisition, children develop their language proficiency through the exchange of conversation with adults and them (Halliday, 1975). Likewise, second language learners will be assisted by interaction with expert speakers. By doing so, they can pay attention to their speeches and produce the language to be more approximate to their more competent interlocutors (Hatch, 1978). Both first and second acquisitions
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are involved with the mode of input-feedback-output. They will be firstly exposed to the target language and adapt their language afterwards through the negotiations for meaning from the capable speaker. Thus, they can articulate the comprehensible output with others (Goh & Burns, 2012). With the help of pushed output (Swain, 2000), language learners would strengthen their awareness of meeting linguistic feature of a language, and achieving a higher standard of speaking such as accuracy, coherence and appropriateness of an oral discourse. In short, the significance of speaking is not only based on learners’ pragmatic needs for their future but also its advantages for boosting learners’ overall language proficiency.
However, the importance of speaking is basically derived from the interactions in daily message exchanges. The speaking addressed in this study refers to the
“decontextualized oral-language use” (p23.) (Goh & Burns, 2012) This speaking ability indicates the capacity to deliver the information explicitly and coherently to the listeners beyond the instant context of interaction. Such speaking skills require more sophisticated and precise language to make information understood to the listeners than daily message exchanges since the listeners share limited background knowledge with the speaker. Similar activities often take place in school curriculums including presentations, storytelling and so forth. These speaking tasks can not only better learners’ fluency but also improve their phonological and grammatical accuracy.
Owing to the importance and advantages of public speaking, many educational administrative organizations and even private institutes host lots of speaking-related competitions to arouse students’ interest in speaking English and to increase language proficiency. For example, National Sat Yat-Sen University and American Institute in Taiwan have collaborated to organize an annual oral-speaking competition for both university students and senior high students since 2014. The university students are
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required to deliver their presentation with the aid of PowerPoint, and the senior high students are asked to provide a prepared speech within a given topic. Also, the Rotary Club has hosted the English speech contest for university students annually for sixty years. The contest asks contestants to present a 5-minute prepared speech in the first round and a 3-minute impromptu speech in the second and final round. Moreover, the Language Training& Testing Center (LTTC) hosted an English speech contest in 2011 for both university students and senior high students. From these examples, it is clear that the English speech contest has prevailed in Taiwan over years.
Despite the popularity of speech contests in Taiwan, only a few studies have been conducted to explore the speech contests from the perspectives of the challenges participants confronted and personal growth they gained (Huang, 2007;Hsieh,
2006;Lin, 2011;Lo, 2011). According to the existing research, the difficulties students confronted could be categorized as the linguistic problems and the affective problems.
The former ranged from the correct vocabulary and sentence patterns to the coherent organization and ideas proposals. The latter referred to the different level of anxieties during the delivery onstage. These data mostly employed quantitative or mixed methods which failed to provide more detailed information about the instant responses the students reacted to the difficulties and the detailed pictures of their struggles in each practice they engaged in. Secondly, only scant studies have taken the senior high school student as the emphasis for further examination. Most of the
studies adopted university students as their participants (Bradley, 2009; Fang, 2005;
Hsieh, 2006; Huang & Lu, 2007), who have more flexible schedules, compared with high school students who only have lunch breaks and the time after-school to accept individual trainings for speech contests. Although some studies did focus on junior and elementary students (Lin, 2011; Lo, 2011), senior high student have better
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proficiency and high maturity may have different reactions to difficulties and hence they deserve further research.