Assessing Students’ Perception of the Effectiveness of Group Discussion in Improving Speaking Skills

Abstract

Group discussion is highly recommended as a crucial instructional method in schools to enhance students' speaking skills. The main objective of this study is to examine the effects of group discussion on students' speaking skills. This study employed both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. A simple random sampling technique was used to select 133 tertiary-level students at Rift Valley University, Burayu Campus, Ethiopia. A Likert-scale questionnaire was employed to collect primary data, which was subsequently analyzed using SPSS and Excel. The study found that group discussion is a highly effective strategy for improving student's oral communication skills. Furthermore, the majority of students believe that group discussions contributed to their enhanced language proficiency.