THE EFFECTS OF TWO COMMUNICATIVE APPROACHES ON THE COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE OF ADULT HISPANIC COLLEGE ESL STUDENTS
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of two communicative methodologies, Strategic Interaction (SI) and Counseling-Learning (CLL), on the communicative competence, self-esteem, and self-assessment abilities of adult Hispanic ESL students in an intensive ESL program. The 24 subjects for the two experimental groups were drawn from the intermediate level of an ESL Intensive Program at a South Bronx community college and randomly placed in either Oral Workshop A (SI) or Oral Workshop B (CLL) while the 12 students in the comparison group were randomly selected from an intermediate ESL class in the regular English program. The Bachman-Palmer Oral Interview of Communicative Proficiency, the Specific Self-Esteem Questionnaire, and the Speaking Self-Assessment Form were utilized as pre- and posttest instruments to measure gains in communicative competence, self-esteem, and self-assessment in the two experimental groups and the comparison group. To assess the first three hypotheses of the study which related to group differences on changes between pre- and posttests on communicative competence, self-esteem and self-assessment, a one-way analysis of covariance was employed using the pretest scores as the covariate. To test the last two hypotheses, Pearson product-moment correlations were computed to assess if there was a significant relationship between communicative competence gains and gains in self-esteem and self-assessment. Results of the study were that: (a) there was a significant program effect in communicative competence between treatment groups and the comparison group; specifically, significant differences were found in the subscales of pragmatic competence and sociolinguistic competence but not in grammatical competence. However, no significant differences were found between the two treatment groups; (b) there was a significant difference in self-esteem between students in Treatment A (SI) and students in the comparison group; however, there was no significant difference between students in treatment groups; (c) there was no significant difference in self-assessment between students in the treatment groups and students in the comparison group; and (d) there was no significant relationship between gains in self-esteem and self-assessment and gains in communicative competence for students in treatment groups and in the comparison group. The major conclusion in the study was that both communicative approaches, Strategic Interaction (SI) and Counseling-Learning (CLL), could be used successfully to improve the communicative competence of college ESL students.
Subject Area
School administration
Recommended Citation
RADIN, BARBARA SUE, "THE EFFECTS OF TWO COMMUNICATIVE APPROACHES ON THE COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE OF ADULT HISPANIC COLLEGE ESL STUDENTS" (1987). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI8715808.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI8715808
