Developing Middle School Students' Speaking Skills According to the EFL Outdoor Practice of Speaking Theory (The OPOS Theory)

This study explores the development of middle school students' speaking skills in English as a foreign language (EFL), by exposure to a new teaching method, the Outdoor Practice of Speaking (OPOS) method. The speaking skills were practiced through speech activities and implemented outdoors and in public. This method was tested as a mixed-method case study via an intervention program to explore its effect on speech anxiety and speech competence in EFL. Study participants were 65 Israeli 14-year-old middle school girls from two different state-religious schools in the north of Israel: 32 students in the intervention group and 33 in the control group. The findings illustrate a significant difference (p < .01) in students' performance in all categories of speech (vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure, and coherence), as well as a significant improvement in score distribution. This improvement indicates the effectiveness of the OPOS method, and the desirability of practicing EFL speaking outside the classroom. OPOS offers EFL teachers worldwide a new method for enhancing students’ learning skills which can help them cope with their EFL anxiety and improve their spoken production. It can also be applied to older students with appropriate modifications.