Puppets and the speaking skil

Abstract

Speaking is considered the most complex skill to acquire in the English language, as some students may have a high level of writing, reading, and listening skills. However, they are deficient in speaking skill. It occurs due to various factors such as fear or anxiety. Therefore, it is essential to apply teaching resources that create a pleasant working environment. In this way, students can develop their speaking skills in an authentic and fun way. An effective example of didactic resources that meets these requirements are puppets. For this reason, the objective of the present research was to determine the influence of Puppets on the speaking skill in eighth-grade students at Unidad Educativa Antonio Carrillo Moscoso. For this purpose, quasi-experimental research was used with a control group and an experimental group with a total of 36 participants. Subsequently, different strategies based on puppets were applied through 5 face-to-face interventions. In addition, data were collected through the performance of a pre-test and a post-test taken from the speaking section of the Cambridge-validated KET. The experimental group showed an increase of 2.8 points on the post-test, while the control group only gained 0.3 thousandths. Finally, the hypothesis was verified through the Wilcoxon statistical test, which found that Z has a significance of -3.757b (bilateral) and the signed-rank was 0.000. The significance was less than 0.05, thus the null hypothesis was rejected and the alternative hypothesis was accepted. As a result, the puppets influenced the ability to speak in eighth-grade students. They improved three aspects of the English language such as grammar- vocabulary, pronunciation and interactive communication.