The Contribution of the Elevator Pitch to Support 11th EFL Graders’ Oral Fluency

This study adopted an action research design to analyze the contribution of the Elevator Pitch technique on English as foreign language learners’ oral fluency. Six 11th graders in a rural at-risk context in a vocational public high school in Hualqui, Chile participated in this study. The Elevator Pitch technique was implemented during seven sessions. Data were collected by conducting a pre- and post-intervention test and a focus group. The quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and the non-parametric Mann-Whitney Wilcoxon test; thematic analysis was used to categorize the responses from the qualitative data. Results suggest an improvement in oral fluency and a positive perception toward the technique used during the intervention, which illustrates how effective the Elevator Pitch technique could be among Chilean learners from similar contexts.