Roles-based engagement in collaborative online discussions to promote EFL speaking

Abstract

This qualitative case study examines students’ perceptions of role-based engagement in collaborative online discussions to promote English as a foreign language (EFL) speaking. For this reason, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 28 students and one educator. The results showed that teachers applied three basic educators’ collaborative competencies (ECC) during online discussions. Thus, group activities are evident through the following: speaking skills (peer grammar repetition and peer pronunciation correction), cognitive boosting (criticizing and confirming specific opinions), social interaction (praising group accomplishments and help-seeking problem-solving), and collaborative skills. The study suggests more research into role-based discussions that occur on the spot or without teachers planning ahead, open-ended speaking diagnostic tasks, designs for online assessment and evaluation of speaking rubrics, fluency-oriented speaking tasks, and technology-assisted peer-learning assessments.

Keywords

• roles-based engagement
• collaborative learning
• online discussion
• speaking efl