Vietnamese Intermediate-Level EFL Students’ Perceptions of the Effects of the Instructor’s Use of Persuasive Graphic Organizer on Speaking Performance

The current study elucidated Vietnamese intermediate-level EFL students’ perceptions of the effects of the instructor’s use of persuasive graphic organizer, a teaching scaffold for speaking, on speaking performance and self-efficacy during speaking practice. Three classes, comprising a total of 89 Vietnamese undergraduate students at intermediate level enrolled in a General English 4 course at a university, were purposively selected for the experimental phase. Participants completed persuasive graphic organizer in each speaking lesson as a scaffold to enhance their speaking performance. At the end of the training course, all participants completed a 36-item questionnaire covering seven dimensions related to the effectiveness of the graphic organizer on speaking performance. Results from the quantitative strand indicated that students demonstrated (i) a higher level of interest in the scaffold, (ii) a higher level of speaking self-efficacy, (iii) self-perceived effective use of the strategy as well as (iv) developing speaking skills. The last part of this paper will discuss the scaffold’s utilization and impacts on Vietnamese EFL learners’ language acquisition in a real classroom context.