In 2014, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology
issued ‘English Education Reform Plan Corresponding Globalization.’ The plan
emphasized the necessity to nourish the students’ attitude toward English to which
they are not afraid of making common mistakes in communication as much as
possible and try to use English at elementary, junior, and senior high schools. The
reform also accentuates the need for students to have more experience in English
communication. Furthermore, it encourages that in junior high school, educators
should build evaluation tools that integrate the four macro skills of language
(listening, speaking, reading, and writing) and consider using performance tests.
To solve the presented issues, this research focused on ‘impromptu speech,’ that
is, ‘delivering speech or utterances without preparing.’ The author hypothesized that
‘impromptu speech’ will improve the speaking ability of students. Under this
hypothesis, the research was conducted in one junior high school third-year class by
introducing ‘impromptu one-minute speech’ and ‘impromptu two minutes dialog’ at
the beginning of every lesson. In this study, the evaluation process of students’
impromptu speech performances by using rubrics properly was also examined.
Individual impromptu speech tests were conducted twice throughout the year, and
impromptu dialog tests (in a pair) were also conducted twice. On the result of the
individual impromptu tests, there was no difference between the first and second
ones. However, the students who got lower points were able to improve their points
in the second test. In impromptu dialog (in a pair), the second test average was two
points higher than that of the first one. The second test topics were controversial
ones that mandated the students’ ability to think, judge, and express themselves.
Over the year, some improvement was observed in both presentation and dialog
activities. The hesitation in speaking English became lowered. However, the author
found that presentation fluency was easily affected by the topics, and this was the
most challenging issue to address in the study.
Keywords: impromptu speech, impromptu dialog, rubrics, fluency
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