The Effects Of 17zuoye APP On Students’ English Speaking Achievement And Their Willingness To Communicate In Primary School

APP-assisted blended learning has become a booming area in English language teaching.It combines off-line lessons with online instructions to provide learners with more personalized learning experience.There were many studies on APP-assisted blended learning,however,most of the studies aimed to explore the effect of an English learning APP targeting the training of a particular language skill on the acquisition of the corresponding skill,mainly for college students.There were few studies that integrate language learning APPs with classroom teaching,and even fewer studies that target spoken English teaching of pupils.Therefore,this thesis selected an English learning APP “17zuoye” and applied APP-assisted blended learning approach to teach spoken English and focused on two research questions: What are the effects of17 zuoye APP on students’ speaking achievement? What are the effects of 17 zuoye APP on students’ willingness to communicate?In this thesis,two parallel fifth grade classes in a primary school in Wenzhou were selected as research subjects,and the experimental class and the control class,each with 26 students,were randomly assigned.The experiment lasted about 2 months.Before the experiment,specific instructions and requirements for using 17 zuoye APP were carefully introduced to students and parents.Then,the speaking pretest was conducted to figure out students’ speaking achievement.In the experiment,a blended teaching mode of online and offline was designed.Before the class,the teacher of the experimental class assigned online independent learning tasks include a range of human-machine interactive activities through 17 zuoye.During the class,the offline class presented the new content and expanded what students had already learned online.After the class,online exercises were assigned through the APP and feedback was given at the same time.The control class received traditional classroom instruction,that is Presentation-Practice-Production model.After the experiment,students’ speaking achievement was tested and their willingness to communicate was measured.Descriptive statistical analysis,independent sample t-tests and paired sample t-tests of speaking tests and WTC questionnaires were conducted by SPSS 26.0 to investigate the effects of APP-assisted blended learning on students.By comparing the speaking post-test scores and willingness to communicate questionnaire scores of two classes and comparing the corresponding changes in pre-test and post-test of the experimental class to investigate the effects of APP-assisted blended learning on students’ speaking achievement and willingness to communicate.The results are as follows: first,from the perspective of speaking achievement,the speaking test scores of students in the experimental class who received APP-assisted blended learning were significantly higher than those of students in the control class who received traditional classroom teaching.The comparative results of pretest and post-test of the experimental class showed that there were significant differences in students’ speaking achievement in terms of pronunciation,grammar,accuracy and fluency,with more significant changes in grammar.Second,from the point of view of willingness to communicate,students in the experimental class scored significantly higher than students in the control class on WTC questionnaire under the 17 zuoye APP-assisted blended learning model.This result indicated that students were more willing to engage in oral communication under the influence of the blended learning model.Specifically,students showed a strong willingness to communicate in a relaxing communicative situation with interactive activities,such as peer or group discussion,making new dialogues,role-playing,asking and answering.This study partially verified the effects of APP-assisted blended learning on students’ speaking achievement and their willingness to communicate.Therefore,teachers should consciously use English learning APPs to facilitate students’ speaking learning and create a relaxing communicative environment and design rich interactive activities in classroom teaching.