The role of Readers Theatre in Developing Speaking Skills and Reducing Speaking Anxiety of EFL Secondary School Students (An experimental study

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness ofreaders theater in developing speaking skills of EFL secondary schoolstudents and reducing their speaking anxiety. The sample of the studyconsisted of fifty-five first year secondary school at El- Lozy SecondarySchool for girls in Damietta Governorate. The two group quasiexperimental design, based on pre-post, non- equivalent control groupdesign was used. The instruments of the study included a speaking skillstest, a speaking skills rubric, and a speaking anxiety scale. The results ofthe study revealed that readers theater significantly developed overallspeaking skills of EFL secondary school students and reduced theirspeaking anxiety. On the other hand, there were no statisticallysignificant differences concerning speaking sub skills: content, accuracy,and pronunciation.

Keywords

• readers theater
• speaking skills
• speaking anxiety
• efl secondary school students