A new strategy to develop EFL learners' speaking skills and to increase willingness to communicate: Translanguaging pedagogy

In the Turkish context, speaking has received the least attention throughout the language learning process. Although Turkish students receive an English as a foreign education for several years, most students still think they cannot speak English fluently or competently. Thus, this study investigated the effect of translanguaging strategy on EFL preparatory students' willingness to communicate and oral fluency. The study was carried out with 76 participants in a private university in Konya. It had a quasi-experimental and mixed-method research design which both qualitative and quantitative methods were implemented. For the students in experimental group, translanguaging as a teaching strategy was applied for four weeks, while traditional teaching methods was conducted for the students in control group. In the intervention phase, the groups had two hours of speaking classes, and task-based activities, presentations, and discussion techniques were used for the students in experimental groups. A modified version of the likert-type willingness to communicate questionnaire, adapted by Mystkowska-Wiertelak and Pawlak (2016), were employed before and after the intervention for both groups. In the data analysis process, whether there was a significant difference between the experimental group and control group and within the groups after the treatment process was checked. For the qualitative part, a semi-structured interview was applied for nine students who were chosen purposefully in the experimental group to find out the effect of translanguaging as a teaching strategy on students' oral fluency. The data were analyzed with the SPSS program and content analysis method. The findings of the pre and post-test showed that there was a significant difference between the students' willingness to communicate in the experimental group and the control group after the intervention. The qualitative data gathered through content analysis revealed that most of the students in experimental group found translanguaging as a teaching strategy rather effective for their speaking fluency since it reduced anxiety, increased motivation and participation during speaking classes. It was stated by the interviewees that through the translanguaging strategy they did not have pauses while speaking and it was also very beneficial for expressing cultural and idiomatic expressions. Keywords: Willingness to communicate, Speaking fluency, EFL learners, Anxiety, Participation, Motivation