The Effectiveness of Focus on Form and/ or on Meaning in the Quality of Oral Presentations

Abstract

The present case study concerns the effectiveness of focus on form and/or meaning in the quality of oral presentations in the department of English at Mohammed Seddik Ben Yahia University, Jijel. Throughout this study, it is hypothesized that students realize English oral proficiency when they concentrate on both form and meaning. To validate this hypothesis, this study was done during the second semester of the academic year 2017/2018 with first year Master students only forty students were chosen. Tools used to test this hypothesis were a students’ questionnaire, a checklist and an interview to see what is the students’ focus during their oral presentations, and the effect of focusing on either form or meaning on the quality of oral presentations. The data obtained from the tools used in this research indicate that neither the students who focus on form, nor the students who focus on meaning reach English oral proficiency. Those data showed that students who focused mainly on form achieved oral accuracy, and those who focused only on meaning achieved oral fluency, while the few of them who focused on both form and meaning achieved English oral proficiency. This led to the conclusion that achieving English proficiency imposes focus both on form and meaning