STRENGTHENING THE SPEAKING PERFORMANCE OF YOUNG LEARNERS BY QUESTIONING STRATEGIES AND ASSISTED WEB TOOLS DURING COVID 19 PANDEMIC1
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Abstract
Young learners' proficiency, interaction, and learning outcomes have increasingly been related to speaking performance during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Theories like the sociocultural theory and the interaction hypothesis have also emphasized the same concept of speaking capacity aligned with the significant role of participation and interaction to empower oral production. This study aimed to observe and investigate online classroom discourse to ensure the most significant role and impact of integrating web-assisted tools and questioning strategies to support the speaking proficiency and interaction of young learners. A case study in which two ten-year-old young learners were learning English in complete online sessions during the outbreak of the Covid19 pandemic enabled us to understand the practices that strengthen the speaking performance through the effective use of blogging, audio reading web tool, and questioning strategies and lead young learners to have better learning outcomes. Four 2hour sessions were recorded and transcribed to understand the nature of interaction and classroom discourse in the online setting. To deepen the understanding related to the findings, Long and Sato taxonomy (1983) was employed to analyze the classroom discourse, and semistructured interviews uncovered how these practices help young learners communicate and speak. The results indicated the impact of questioning strategies and the interaction's crucial role, which contributed to better learning outcomes in the virtual setting during the digital era.