Investigating Learners' Perspectives on ELSA Speak Integration to Enhance Autonomy and Oral Language Proficiency in English Classes

The study highlights the integration of the ELSA Speak application, regarded as a MALL – Mobile-Assisted Language Learning tool, in a general English course for fostering learner autonomy. Initially, the application is built wholly based on the speech recognition function, which allows it to receive oral inputs from users and provide them with feedback. This paper employs qualitative and quantitative methods to examine the app’s potential to bolster learner autonomy and how learners' oral language proficiency is related to their degree of autonomy. The participants are 50 sophomores from Sai Gon University whose majors are not English Linguistics. The findings highlight the significance of providing an outstanding self-access learning space, a learning environment allowing learners to control their learning process and deliver critical reflections. These findings also emphasize the playfulness of the experience and the potential to eliminate limited opportunities to find conversation partners and negative feelings of social judgment. All of these elements forge great motivation and stimulus, which greatly enhance the degree of autonomy. Consequently, participants with greater autonomy also demonstrate better speaking competence.