Impact of Fully-Immersive Teaching vs. Conventional Communicative Language Teaching on the Articulation Skills of EFL Learners With Expressive Language Disorder

Mojgan Khaki ¹ (Department of English, Isfahan( Khorasgan) Branch, Islamic Azad University, Isfahan, Iran)
Hossein Heidari Tabrizi ² (Department of English, Isfahan( Khorasgan) Branch, Islamic Azad University, Isfahan, Iran)
Sajad Shafiee ³ (English Department, Shahrekord Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shahrekord, Iran)

Submited date : 2023-08-03 accepted date : 2023-10-11

Keywords: Oral fluency, EFL learners, expressive language disorder, expressive vocabulary, sentence repetition,

Abstract :

Based on the tenets of the cognitive theory of multimedia learning, the purpose of this research was to investigate the impact of Fully-Immersive Teaching (FIT) vs. conventional communicative language teaching on the articulation abilities of Iranian EFL learners diagnosed with Expressive Language Disorder (ELD). Purposively choosing 36 Iranian pre-intermediate EFL learners who had mild to moderate levels of ELD, we used a quasi-Solomon four-group design and separated them into two experimental and two control groups. The intervention included twenty sessions of seventy minutes each and comprised of eighty microlearning speech exercises that were developed in VR by FIT. The participants in the control group were given instruction based on Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), which is an approach to language education. Both the OQPT and the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test (WIAT-III) were used in this study's pre-testing and post-testing procedures. The results showed that individuals who were instructed in accordance with FIT performed better than their colleagues who had been subjected to CLT in terms of articulation abilities. These skills included expressive vocabulary, oral word fluency, and sentence repeats. TEFL, therapeutic education, cognitive speech therapy, and instructional technology might all stand to gain from the outcomes.