Video-production-integrated spoken English pedagogy: An action research into the effects of video production on Chinese EFL (English as a foreign language) learners’ spoken attainment

Abstract

This action research investigated the effect of video production in teaching spoken English to Chinese EFL (English as a foreign language) learners. Building on an extensive literature review in the field of SLA (Second Language Acquisition), TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) and CALL (Computer-Assisted Language Learning), this research established a Video-Production-Oriented Spoken English Pedagogy (VPOSEP) in the first place and put it into teaching practice for empirical study. Utilising a mixed-methods approach, this research conducted two consecutive rounds of Spoken English course in a university in China for data analysis and interpretation. After the first-round course, it was found that statistically speaking, VPOSEP worked as well as the traditional way of instruction, with two unique affordances emerging from the qualitative data pertaining to the situated learning opportunities mediated and the positive emotion instigated by video production. However, the inspirations drawn from the data also suggested integrating both video production and traditional instruction could be a third option, and rendered a pedagogical redesign and further validation. The data collected from the secondround course indicated an equally effective Video-Production-Integrated Spoken English Pedagogy (VPISEP) based on students’ test performance. While retaining the two video production affordances found previously, the new pedagogy added depth by generating another two affordances distinctively, respectively in terms of affording personalized learning and advancing multiliteracies. Extracting from these key findings, the study decided that VPISEP would be an optimal spoken English pedagogical model and conceptualized a 4 ‘P’ pedagogical framework featuring particularity, practicality, possibility and positivity. It further probed into some key pedagogical constructs including the productive environment, the multifaceted pedagogical goals and the critical assessment, and clarified the roles of critical keyholders, including learner, teacher and technology, in the hope of providing implications for the practical implementation of the pedagogy.