The Role of Social Interactions in ESL Students' Processes of Learning Speaking Skills

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the way in which social interactions mediated ESL students' speaking skills. Specifically, I investigated what types of social interactions they engaged in their daily lives and how they interacted in them in order to investigate the role of social interactions in their processes of learning speaking skills. Multiple sources of data were utilized, such as participant observation, fieldnotes, participants' journals, participants' interactions, and the SPEAK test. The results revealed that social interactions were crucial in learning and developing their speaking skills. The participant who participated in superficial interactions in everyday life showed inappropriateness of interaction because those interactions yielded limited interactive resources and practices, while the participant who participated in interactions where he/she could negotiate meaning with interlocutors showed interactionally appropriate performance because those interactions provided diverse interactive resources and practices, which eventually facilitated the process of learning and developing speaking skills.