과업 전 계획 활동을 통한 초등 영어 학습자의 말하기 능력 향상 연구

A study on improving the speaking ability of Korean EFL elementary school students through pre-task planning activities

This study investigated the effects of pre-task planning activities on the development of Korean EFL elementary school students’ speaking ability. A total of 38 fifth and sixth grade children watched a short video clip of a children’s story in Korean and were asked to retell the story in English. In order to examine how various types of planning activities might affect their story-retelling performance, the children-participants were randomly divided into three groups, each group experiencing different planning conditions: (1) guided planning; (2) unguided planning; and (3) no planning (as a control). The results showed that pre-task planning contributed to enhanced accuracy and fluency in the children’s story retelling outcomes. Also, in terms of the accuracy and fluency, the guided planning group was found to outperform the unguided planning group. No difference was found among the three groups, however, in terms of the complexity of language use. The results of interviews conducted after the retelling task revealed that the participants under the planning conditions in particular were able to draw their attention to both form and meaning simultaneously, suggesting that planning can be successfully employed as a way to improve the accuracy and fluency of Korean elementary school students’ English speaking performance.