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Improving Speaking Fluency through Authentic Content with the Aid of Video Blogs

Abstract:

English has become the international language in a globalized world. People have different motivations to learn it. Its importance in communication, commerce and media is increasing. The growing interest for English learning around the world is then reasonable and because of this, quality language teaching, strategies and resources are in high demand (Richards, 2002). Since successful language acquisition is usually measured by how well an individual carries a conversation in the target language (Brown, 2002), learners are interested in improving their English to reach a high level of both fluency and accuracy (Richards, 2006). Nevertheless, according to Zhang, of the four skills, it is speaking that students find the most difficult to master (as cited in Al Hosni, 2014). English language instruction has become compulsory in Ecuador since 2016, and the curriculum design itself is based on the levels and standards of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR; Ministerio de Educación, 2016). The expectation is that students will achieve a B1 level at the end of their Baccalaureate, which means that to start university they should be able to “enter unprepared into conversations on familiar topics'' in English. Nevertheless, the result of a proficiency test taken at a public university revealed that 80 % of the participants were A2 or less (Neira, 2020). Although this is just an example, it shows why in a report from an English proficient index, Ecuador was placed 93 out of 100 countries and in the last position among Latin American countries analyzed according to the level of competence in the language. If we take into consideration that the two previous years the country ended up 81 and 65 respectively (Education First, 2020), the necessity of finding and applying new strategies that can better guide instruction becomes evident.