The Impact of ICT Integration in Improving the Grade 3 Students’ English Speaking Skills

Speaking is the most important skill among the four language skills to interact and communicate with others in the social community. As English is widely used across the subjects worldwide, it is very essential to acquire the English-speaking skill to communicate and succeed in their respective field. However, most of the students’ in Bhutan encounter difficulty in speaking English as it is the second language. There are also lot of other reasons such as lack of exposure, lack of vocabularies, lack of interesting teaching and learning strategies, etc. that motivates them to speak English. Thus, this research aims in finding the improvement in grade 3 students’ English-speaking skills through integrating ICT in teaching and learning. This study employed mixed method and the data was collected through observing the control and experimental group using rubrics. The questionnaires were also administered to study the students’ perception on speaking English Language and some of its significance. The experiment group were given extra classes for an hour every day where they are engaged in various activities through the integration of ICT.

The research finding indicated that students in experiment group was far better in language structure and comprehension, whereas not much differences was shown in fluency between the two groups. Therefore, it was concluded that there was improvement in students’ English-speaking skills through the integration of ICT in teaching and learning. It was also found that most students were aware that speaking English helps them in their academic performance, though most of them do not completely agree that English speaking is more important than Dzongkha.

From the finding, it could be suggested that the teachers could use the various interventions such as ICT to improve students’ English-speaking skills in teaching and learning.