The impact of Teachers’ use of Neuro-cognitive strategies on enhancing EFL Students’ Speaking Skills

Abstract

Enhancing speaking skills in language education has become a demand for learning another language that can be developed through learning strategies. Neurocognitive strategies are used in fulfilling this demand. This study have investigated the impact of neurocognitive strategies on improving EFL students’ speaking skills. The study used a quasi-experimental design in which two groups of 28 (control group) and 28 (experimental group) students were selected. The experimental group received instruction embedded with neuro-cognitive strategies which are: activating background knowledge, chunking and patterning, and dual-coding. Two tests were administered which are pre- and post-tests based on the IELTS speaking criteria to both groups. Both groups were assessed based on the speaking subskills: fluency and coherence, lexical resources, grammatical range and accuracy, and pronunciation. The data were analyzed by both descriptive statistics and a mixed-design repeated-measures ANOVA. The descriptive statistics indicated that all students improved across all speaking subskills, with the experimental group demonstrating higher gains in fluency, coherence, and lexical resource, while pronunciation improvements were substantial and similar across groups. A mixed-design repeated-measures indicates that neurocognitive strategies showed positive impact on the development of specific speaking-subskills. The study highlights the importance of using neurocognitive strategies into language instruction to support skill-specific development.