The Effect of Flipped Classroom Technique on Developing English Speaking Skills of EFL learners

Abstract

Various innovative language teaching techniques have been created and applied in language classes to improve students’ speaking skills. Flipped classroom technique, a new pedagogical model, has paved the way for transformation in the foreign language teaching field for it provides students with online instruction or language content in videos to be studied as homework and an opportunity to practice linguistic input in the classroom. The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of the Flipped Classroom Technique on developing the English Speaking Skills of EFL learners. Semi-experimental method was used to examine the data. The population of the study was made up of Forty-seven intermediate EFL students in an English institute in Khorramabad, Iran. They were divided into two groups, experimental (males=8, females=9) and control group (males=9, females=8). Each group comprised of seventeen students. The experimental group was taught based on flipped classroom techniques while the control group was taught according to traditional methods. Besides, the participants’ age range was between 16 to 26 years old. The instruments used for data collection are the IELTS Speaking Test, Multimedia resources, Brainstorming, and the IELTS speaking rubric. The findings of the study show that there is a meaningful difference between those instructed with flipped classroom techniques and those instructed with traditional methods. Those who were taught by the flipped technique outperformed those who were instructed by the traditional methods. Based on these findings, it can be concluded that the flipped classroom technique is an effective technique in terms of developing the speaking skills of EFL learners.