The Effect of Flip Discussions on EFL Students’ Speaking Skills and Attitudes

In English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms, classroom time allocated for discussions to develop students’ speaking skills is mostly limited due to crowded classrooms, time constraints, or intensive curriculum. This study aimed to investigate the impact of an asynchronous computer-mediated communication tool, Flip, on the attitudes and speaking proficiency advancement of EFL students. To this end, the Flip application was integrated into the traditional classroom setting to increase the discussion time outside the classroom. Seventeen eleventh-grade EFL high school students from Samsun, Türkiye participated in the study through convenience sampling. Using an explanatory sequential mixed methods design, the study collected both quantitative and qualitative data from students through pre-and post-test speaking tests and semi-structured interviews. The numeric data were analyzed using the SPSS program, while the qualitative data underwent theme analysis. The results demonstrated that using Flip enhanced students' speaking ability and positively impacted their attitudes. Additionally, the findings from the semi-structured interviews demonstrated that students perceived asynchronous Flip discussions as beneficial to interact with each other both inside and outside the classroom by allowing them to get to know each other well, improve their fluency and pronunciation, get feedback from their teachers, and reduce their speaking anxiety. On the other hand, there were a few disadvantages mentioned by some students including lack of face-to-face communication due to the asynchronous mode and the invisibility of their videos by some users from time to time.