Fostering students’ confidence through oral activities based on their interests

Abstract

The purpose of this study originated from the need to increase students’ confidence. The approach that was taken was to use students’ interests to develop oral activities. Through these, they had the opportunity to practice and have more contact with the speaking skill, and this way increase their confidence. The main objective was to establish whether oral activities based on students’ interests foster their confidence. The participants in this study were 30 students from the 2016 fifth level of Tourism at the University of Cuenca, for whom an interest questionnaire was developed and applied in order to delimit the themes to be used. The instrument that was used to measure confidence was Griffee’s (1997) Confidence Questionnaire, which was applied before and after the intervention. After analyzing the results obtained from the interest questionnaire, it was possible to establish the oral activities that would be carried out in the intervention. To ensure and establish whether the activities were to the students’ interest, they had to evaluate each activity with an evaluation form. All the observations that took place during the development of the activities were registered on a journal. The data obtained from the evaluation form was analyzed, and it was found that students approved of the activities in being to their interest. It is also concluded that the level of confidence increased significantly.