The Effect Of Extracurricular Activities On Improving Students’ English Speaking Skills: The Case Of Grade 10 Students At Jaldu Secondary School

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of extracurricular activities on improving grade 10 students' English speaking skills at Jaldu secondary school. By using quasi-experimental and descriptive survey research design of mixed methods, 18 teachers comprehensively, 80 students were determined by using Carvalho’s (1987) sample size formula and selected through simple random sampling technique involved in the study without a non-response rate. Three separate instruments; tests (pretest and posttest), questionnaires rated by using a 5-point Likert-scale and focus group discussions were conducted to collect relevant data. The survey data was processed by using an SPSS (version 20). Descriptive statistics to calculate frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviations of experimental group’s questionnaires and teacher’s questionnaire were used while inferential statistics like independent sample t-test was used for experimental and control group tests. The findings of the study showed that dialogue, discussions and describing pictures were found the mostly commonly used extracurricular activities towards improving students’ speaking skill, all students and teachers had positive attitudes towards ECAs, from the post test result, it was found that the effect of ECAs on speaking skills was significant between control and the experimental groups since the calculated p-value (i.e., 0.000)is less than the alpha (α) value (i.e. 0.05). Therefore, the ECAs were found to have a positive effect on improving students’ speaking skills and the researcher recommended the students, teachers, Jaldu secondary school, Jaldu Woreda education office, and other concerned stakeholders to make use of ECAs in English speaking classes