Attempt of audioblog use on English speaking confidence for after-school speaking practice

The study was conducted to advance EFL speaking instructional design that endeavored to not only provide students alternative opportunities for oral practice after class but also affect their perception of English speaking confidence. In order to encourage the students to engage with a continual learning immersion on English speaking practice, the use of audioblog was taken as facilitation to aid out-of-class learning. To this end, the study aimed to discover two folded perspectives: (1) whether the EFL students' English speaking confidence would vary before and after the facilitation engaged in the instruction; (2) if so, whether and how the number of recording uploads on audioblogs influence their English speaking confidence accordingly. The participants were 574 senior night school students attending the required English speaking class for one semester. They were tutored to accomplish one theme-related oral recording and post it on their audioblogs after each in-class instruction. Pre/ post- surveys were given to the students to collect responses of their English speaking confidence, as well as the amount of oral recording uploads were gathered for data analysis. The findings of this study showed that a significant difference of improvement on the students' English speaking confidence by the assistance of oral recording practice. Additionally, regarding different number of oral recording uploads, it displayed that those who accomplished at least four oral recording uploads had a significant difference on English speaking confidence while comparing to those who did none. Although the outperformance on students' English speaking confidence was appeared only if they uploaded a minimum of four oral recordings, an ascent of English speaking confidence was illustrated via those who did more oral recording uploads on their audioblogs. In sum, the findings of this study highlighted that in terms of 'more practice' on EFL speaking, the instructor should be cautious about adapting the English speaking instructional design as well as a systematic extent of speaking practice.