Developing the English sociolinguistic competency of Grade 7 students through scenario-based learning methods

This quasi-experimental study tested the use of scenario-based learning (SBL) for developing the English sociolinguistic competency of Grade 7 students. The objectives of this study are twofold. Firstly, to compare the English sociolinguistic competency of students taught with SBL (the experiment group) to those of students taught the same lesson content by traditional methods (the control group). Secondly, to compare the English sociolinguistic competency of students in the experiment group before and after treatment with SBL lessons. The main research tools used in this study were: Four SBL lesson plans for students in the experiment group, and a thirty-item multiple-choice English sociolinguistic competency test which was used as a pretest and posttest. The development of the research tools included IOC inspection and revision by qualified experts, and a try-out with students not in the research sample group. Both the experiment and control groups were taught the exact same lesson content and themes, with only the methodology being different. Though the results of this study showed no significant difference between the learning results of the two groups, it did show that students taught with SBL made significant improvement between their pretest and posttest scores. The results of this study may be useful for further research on developing scenario-based English language lessons, teaching and testing language competencies, and teaching English to Grade 7 students.