Abstract:
In seeking employment, undergraduates with better speaking skills in English with average
academic performance tend to get an edge over their colleagues with comparatively lower
communication skills despite their excellent academic qualifications. Opportunities that can
be made available to undergraduates to speak during class hours are hardly enough to bring
about any tangible result. The purpose of the present research was to study the role of writing
activities in the development of oral fluency of undergraduates who learn English as a second
language. In this study, it is assumed that there is a correlation between speech and writing
and thus writing can help stimulate the cognitive mechanisms relating to speech production,
which would lead to the improvement of oral fluency.
The study was conducted with two groups of students. All the participants were taught for
fourteen weeks where the control group was made to do only the lessons common to both
groups. Conversely, in addition to the lessons common to both groups, the experimental
group was made to do the specially designed writing activities which were intended to
improve their fluency. The recorded conversations of the participants were analyzed for their
fluency according to Fillmore‘s definition of fluency. Speed of delivery, frequency of voiced
fillers and silent pauses were taken into account when analyzing the data.
The two groups were statistically compared for their achievement in fluency using statistical
package of SPSS (Version 16). The results showed that there was a significant improvement
in the fluency of the students of the experimental group, especially of the weaker ones, which
could not be found in the students of the control group. Thus the study supported the view
that special writing activities could be used for improving the fluency of adult Second
Language learners of English.
