Improving Speaking Performance and Learning Autonomy of High School Students through YouTube Video Presentations

The oral presentation is widely used to assess students’ speaking skills because of its great advantages. However, during the Covid-19 outbreak, most teachers ignored the assessment of oral presentation due to the restrictions on classroom interactions. This problem may cause poor performance of students' speaking skills, which creates a need for determining a novel teaching technique to help students improve their speaking ability. Therefore, in this study, the video production mode of presentations posted on YouTube was employed as an alternative assessment tool. This project aims to examine its impact on the improvement of students' speaking skills and learning autonomy. The project was conducted for 35 English-majored students in Grade 11, in a gifted high school context in Southern Vietnam. Data were collected using survey questionnaires and the analysis of videos. The results from survey questionnaires show that during the Covid-19 outbreak, YouTube videos considered as an IT-based media could replace traditional in-class presentations. That could improve students’ learning autonomy, confidence, collaborative skills, and IT skills. The results from the analysis of videos also illustrate that students' speaking skills are improved in terms of content, language, pronunciation, and fluency. Implications for EFL curriculum and instructional design, as well as recommendations for future studies of digitalization of students’ oral assessment are then discussed. Keywords: Video presentations, YouTube videos, speaking skills, learning autonomy.