Promoting speaking spontaneity in large classes: An action research study in an Indonesian EFLuniversity setting

In the last two decades, teaching spoken English to EFL students has become a critical issue in the TESOL context. However, a few studies touch upon how EFL learners are taught to speak English spontaneously. Learning to speak English spontaneously in large classes becomes a big challenge for ESOL teachers because of space and time constraints. In response to this growing need, this article provides an empirical account of how modified role playing, more student-centered learning, is implemented as an innovative learning design in an EFL university setting where a large class is concerned. Data were garnered from open-ended and close-ended questionnaires, students’ personal narratives, and photovoices. These data were analyzed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Findings of the study show that the students were finally able to survive in their speaking tasks, engaging them in a real-life communicative encounter. This study concludes with some pedagogical implications for how a teacher as a curriculum designer engages students in motivating and anxiety-free speaking tasks.


INTRODUCTION
Teaching English speaking in a large class is a great challenge for teachers. Kroeker (2009) in her study pointed out that conversation classes in a Korean university were not geared for communicativelyoriented language learning due to a number of students in a speaking class, which did not maximize the class time for conversational practices. In reality, this large class does not afford students the opportunity to engage in meaningful speaking activities as far as the use of English is concerned. Recent studies (see Chan, Chin, & Suthiwan, 2011;Widodo, 2015a) reported that in large classes, many foreign language teachers focused on form-based instruction and memorizing a dialog text to promote students" speaking fluency. In this situation, they were required to place emphasis on language as a means of communication rather than as a reinforcement of "form-based" orientation (Widodo, 2015a). Kroeker (2009) added that an English conversation class did not aim to promote students" communicative competence because the main purpose was to envision them for "future employment" in which a TOEIC test became a requirement. This communicative competence was seen as a dilemma perceived by both students and teachers because of examination orientation (Hong, 2006). Thus, teachers play a crucial role in the design of a meaningful task, which can engage students in learning activities, such as speaking tasks (Widodo, 2015a).
Despite large classes, getting to speak up is also another challenge for EFL students. For instance, students encounter speaking problems, such as anxiety, lack of self-confidence, and lack of language repertoire (e.g., vocabulary and grammar). In Asia, previous studies in Oman, Vietnam, and China revealed that university students could not communicate verbally in English owing to a lack of self-confidence, inadequate vocabulary, and lack of the necessary knowledge (Al-Mahrooqi & Al-Aghbari, 2015;Hong, 2006;Zhou, 2015). Moreover, Humphries, Burns, and Tanaka (2015) found that foreign language learners at a Japanese university faced difficulties speaking up because of being shy to speak up to their classmates. Lack of preparation time also became a problem because it took time for students to formulate what to say due to their lack of language proficiency. This empirical evidence is a starting point for EFL teachers to think of the design of speaking instruction in a large-class EFL setting.
To engage students in meaningful speaking tasks, role playing can be a platform for students to encourage their participation through participatory learning, and the majority of students found it beneficial as reported by Julius and Osman (2015) and Stevens (2015). Recently, a study in Taiwan indicated that a role-play has been found to be very influential in foreign language learning, allowing students to be involved in a wide range of language repertoire in English and to motivate them to enhance their communicative competence (Robinson, Harvey, & Tseng, 2016). The use of role plays in English speaking classrooms is not a new endeavor in ELT to develop language students" fluency in a communicative way. However, a few studies (Julius & Osman, 2015;Robinson, Harvey, & Tseng, 2016) did not demonstrate how a role play promoted students" speaking spontaneity. To fill this void, this article attempts to provide a practical insight into the teaching of speaking in a foreign language, such as English. It also highlights a socioemotional dimension of students" learning engagement. In other words, this article aims to shed light on how to teach speaking spontaneity with modified role playing in a student-centered learning environment.

Speaking as text production
The nature of speaking comes before constructing a written form (Willis, 2015), which deals with both a social practice and cognitive process. As text production, speaking is multimodally presented and expresses a "social meaning" in a "certain situation" (Widodo, 2015a). Like listening, it entails numerous "mental processes" as the interaction in the "working memory," which then relates to how students experience themselves in the process of socialization integrated with "the society around them" (Goh, 2014;Willis 2015). To support the notion of speaking as text production, the authenticity of spoken text plays a vital role in socializing students into how to understand and produce texts in a particular social context, helping them build their communicative competence (Widodo, 2016c). Because of multimodality presented, different modes of spoken texts both visual and verbal help students interact with one another in their speaking encounter. Thus, speaking involves both social and cognitive aspects which are mutually reinforcing.
The mental processes previously explained are mutually interrelated with physical processes, how the speech is produced. Levelt & Levelt et al. (1989;1999, as cited in Goh, 2014 contends that "speech production is the result of three sets of mental and physical processes: conceptualisation, formulation and articulation" (p. 6). The first process is the selection of ideas or information to be communicated affected by the speakers" prior or "encyclopaedic" knowledge about particular talks they would like to convey. The message spoken may be represented as a vaguely simple gist. Formulation is the continuity of the previous process in which the concepts selected are "fleshed out" in the right grammaring. Speakers" choices, not only word choice, are related to how the utterances have the implied meaning to the interlocutor. Finally, "the formulated utterances are conveyed through the activation and control of specific muscle groups of the articulatory system through the process of articulation" (Goh, 2007;Goh, 2014, p. 6). However, insufficient knowledge of what to say or selection of the right words to express their meanings are challenges language learners face during one or more speech processes (Goh, 2014).
It is important to note that speaking is a complex activity for students in an EFL speaking classroom because students have to express both content knowledge and linguistic resources in an appropriate way (Widodo, 2015b). In addition, students feel anxious due to a peer negative evaluation of their speaking activity, and this was considered as embarrassment (Widodo, 2015b). A previous study by Gan (2013) revealed that four components, such as lexicogrammar, cognitive processes, speaking anxiety, and lack of perceived speaking practices, became impediments for university students in China and Hong Kong to engaging in English speaking tasks. Another study conducted in New Zealand by Cao (2011) also examined ecological factors influencing students" willingness to communicate (WTC) in L2. Findings of this study showed that WTC in L2 as experienced by students were influenced by three major domains; they were individual (self-confidence), communal (topic and task type), and linguistic (language proficiency) dimensions. This may hinder students from participating actively in the speaking classroom and affect their speaking fluency. Therefore, it is essential for English teachers to encourage students to explore their spoken language Copyright © 2018, IJAL, e-ISSN: 2502-6747, p-ISSN:2301-9468 to cope with simultaneous demands in a speaking class they participate in.
Role playing as a mediation of learning to speak spontaneously As a learning designer, a language teacher is supposed to explore a classroom innovation or creativity so as to create favorable conditions which can trigger learning activities. This concurs with Lazaraton"s (2001) argument that EFL teachers are required to provide a myriad of authentic and motivating learning activities. Role playing can be one of the most potential ways to engage students in meaningful activities in an EFL speaking classroom. Robinson, Harvey, & Tseng (2016) reported that role play affected students" speaking engagement significantly. Most of students acknowledged that role play-assisted speaking tasks engaged them emotionally and honed their speaking competence. Hence, role playing might play a role as a speaking task with a fluency orientation, and this fluency needs to be supported by accuracy because "accuracy is the key factor that facilitates the flow of communication" (Widodo, 2015a, p. 297). Widodo (2015a) also emphasized that the term accuracy is closely related to grammaring, in which linguistic choices become the starting point of conveying spoken languages appropriately. Thus, both fluency and accuracy intermingle one another.
To foster students" active participation in a large speaking class, both a modified role play and speaking circle (adapted from Widodo, 2016a) in this study are encouraged. Various genres and situations of the same topic provide students with language opportunities and practices. This speaking task can be an innovative way when teachers implement speaking tasks through situational roles and creative roles: the supermarket simulation and going to the restaurant or café. For example, conversation practices in a restaurant will engage students in a myriad of speaking tasks, speaking circles, because the interaction not only occurs between waiters and customers, but also among customers (e.g., having a small talk on a food"s taste) and among waiters. This process can encourage students" speaking engagement, which can maintain their speaking spontaneity (Talandis & Stout, 2014;Willis, 2015). Equally important, teachers need to build up students" awareness of spoken language features embracing seven essential principles: "spoken language is additive, conversation is interactive, conversation is evaluative, conversation is "vague," discourse markers, conversation is formulaic, and conversation is creative" (see Willis, 2015, p. 10 for more details).
As a final note of this section, teaching innovation is best manifested through a variety of communicative tasks, such as modified role plays and simulations (bringing students to a cafe for spontaneous communication training). A teacher can engage students in spontaneous communication to assist students to enhance their communicative competence "with no loss of grammatical accuracy" (Savignon, 2017, p. 3). Students" speaking spontaneity as a pedagogical focus for this article can be attained through modified role playing and speaking circles among other pedagogical methods (illustrated in Figure 10 and Figure 11) because the two tasks can encourage students to engage in spontaneous speaking, and they are closely related to "task repetition" (Goh & Burns, 2012), which may contribute to students" speaking spontaneity dynamically.

METHOD Research site and participants
This study was undertaken at a university in West Java, Indonesia. The participants of the study were aged between 19 and 20 years old, in which female students (approximately 70%) were more dominant than and male students (30%) who learned English since primary schooling. They were 160 lowerintermediate learners of English who experienced a six-month English speaking course divided into four classes: A, B, C, and D in the English Education Department. Most of them spoke Sundanese and Javanese; some of them come from Jakarta and speak the Indonesian language. They are from different cultural backgrounds and got different language experiences. To many of the participants, English speaking anxiety became an impediment to a conversation practice because they did not get used to speaking spontaneously.
Before this study commenced, we negotiated our research project with the participants as part of research ethics (Bickman & Rog, 2008). For this reason, all the participants were well-informed of this research so that they could make an informed decision on whether they agreed or declined to participate in the research project. All the participants were asked to complete an online consent form and submit the signed form upon their participation in the project. They deserved the right to withdraw their involvement in any phases of the research project.

Materials and pedagogical procedures
A modified role play and speaking circles were chosen as speaking tasks because of two reasons. First, we designed this role play to assist our students to practice authentic English speaking. They practiced their speaking with real-life different roles at the café ("Woody Kitchen"), such as becoming a waiter or a waitress. Others acted out as costumers ordering and eating the foods. Second, students were also allowed to choose what roles they would like to play, such as waiters and costumers so as to build and enhance students" Copyright © 2018, IJAL, e-ISSN: 2502-6747, p-ISSN:2301-9468 confidence in being involved in different speaking chores. However, since they had no experience in speaking practices in English at the café, the teachers scaffolded students how to play different roles through modelling. As this activity took place at a real-life café, we also invited a café manager to explain the standard operational procedures to students concerning how to play a role as waiter or a waitress. This process assisted students to familiarize how to carry out the English-medium speaking task, such as how a waiter or a waitress serves a customer professionally at the café. In this respect, the teachers had to ensure that all students were engaged in this speaking task.
The intervention of the modified role play and speaking circles was executed following an action research procedure over a span of a semester of the speaking course because implementing role plays in large classes requires a series of tasks depicted in Table 1. In this study, we followed action research stages proposed by Widodo (2016b) and the adoption of the teaching speaking cycle (see Goh & Burns, 2012). Different cycles of instructional activities integrated cognitive, metacognitive, affective domains in order to afford students many opportunities to speak up, and the activities include: Providing students with opportunities to pay attention to their speech features (e.g., fluency, clarity, or intelligibility) and language aspects (e.g., pronunciation, vocabulary, spoken grammar) Promoting peer assessment that allows students to comment on each other"s speaking chores concerning both speech features and language aspects Guiding students to reflect on their speaking task with a common role play through online open-ended and closeended questionnaires

Stage 5 Repeat Speaking Task
Negotiating with students about the time and place for modified role playing and speaking circles: supermarket simulation and going to the café, "Woody Kitchen", focusing on classes C and D.
Asking students to perform modified role play and speaking circles, the supermarket simulation (see Figure 10) and acting out the roles of customers and sales person Inviting students to a café ("Woody Kitchen") for conversational practices, speaking circles (see Figure  11) to improve their speaking spontaneity

Stage 6 Direct students' reflection in learning
Engaging students in reflecting on and for learning strengths and weaknesses of their speaking performance (see Widodo & Ferdiansyah, 2018) Giving students the opportunity to evaluate their speaking performance in pairs or in groups Telling students to narrate their feelings and attitudes, self-evaluation on speaking development, especially speaking spontaneity after the supermarket simulation through Students" Facebook Group (SFG)

Stage 7 Facilitate feedback on learning
Evaluating and commenting on students" speaking performance Responding to students" personal narratives on SFG Asking students to reflect on a-semester long speaking class through online close-ended questionnaires

Data collection methods and analysis
Data were garnered from open-ended and closeended questionnaires, students" personal narratives on SFG, and photovoices. The questionnaire was distributed twice to students. The first open-ended and close-ended questionnaire was distributed to students after they experienced the speaking task with a common role play (see Figure 2) so as to Copyright © 2018, IJAL, e-ISSN: 2502-6747, p-ISSN:2301-9468 document their self-assesment of their speaking performance and also their speaking anxiety. The second close-ended questionnaire was distributed after the students experienced the speaking class during the whole semester to evaluate their speaking progress related to speaking anxiety, speaking spontaneity, and fluency. Additionally, students" personal narratives on SFG aimed to document students" feelings and attitudes as well as selfevaluation of speaking development, especially speaking spontaneity. To help teachers" reflections, photovoices were used to document how students were engaged in speaking tasks analyzed by the SHOWeD method (see Wang & Burris 1997). The Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used to investigate repeated patterns (themes) of the data (Brocki & Wearden, 2006). The analysis encompassed three stages: multiple reading and making notes (e.g., highlighting data related to socio-emotional dimension), transforming notes into emergent themes, and seeking relationship and clustering themes (See Pietkiewicz & Smith, 2014 for a fuller discussion of each stage). In this IPA, emic and etic positionings (Clarke, 2009) were adopted to help us analyze data. The emic position enabled us to contextually see the participants" experiences. The etic position allowed for making sense of the participants" experiences through subjective and theoretical interpretations.
To ease the analysis, the colored coding system was also deployed. First, the coding system used red parenthesis ([ ]) to emphasize students" speaking anxiety, common role playing (Figure 2), and speaking circles (see Figure 10). More colorful coding was also deployed to show the dynamics of speaking circles perceived by students. Red reflects the emotional engagement; Blue illustrates the new learning experiences; Orange portrays the speaking circle; black depicts the speaking spontaneity; and green shows self-confidence. Open-ended questionnaire Emotional engagement and speaking circle I"m sorry, because I was late to leave a comment. Speaking class last week was very exciting for me. because I could speak without being nervous. I was also able to interact not only with one person, but with more than 5 people. To learn to speak is very creative, innovative, and entertaining with my role became a maid cafe can train me to be a better speaker.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
Our IPA resulted in two predominant themes, such as (1) language anxiety of speech production and (2) emotional engagement and speaking circles. Each of these findings is presented in relation to students" speaking spontaneity in the EFL speaking classroom.

Language anxiety of speech production
The aim of this study was to engage students in spontaneous speaking tasks, modified role playing and speaking circles, so as to enhance their speaking performance. Findings of this study indicate that overall, students" responses of two classes were positive: Class A and Class B. Drawing from their self-assessment, the majority of students (more than 80%) recounted that their English speaking had improved while the rest of them from Class C and Class D tended to disagree that they had a good progress of their speaking (see Figure 1).
Based on this set of data, students with low speaking proficiency mostly felt nervous and even reluctant to perform a speaking task with a common role play (see Figure 2) because of language anxiety and the obstacles concerning speech production. This phenomenon can bee seen in the following students" open-ended questionaire result.  Based on Excerpt 1, student"s self-assessment showed the unsatisfying result of the speaking performance. In addition, the student acknowledged that formulating and articulating the spoken languages were the primary obstacles in the speaking class. In the same vein, shown in Excerpt 2, both the speech formulation and articulation became the main challenges. This challenge affected students not to speak up confidently (See Excerpt 3 and Excerpt 4). This might happen because their performance was intentionally monitored by intructors and peers (See Figure 2). Kasbi & Shirvan (2017) highlighted that foreign language anxiety, specifically in speaking, arises because of classroom agents (e.g., a teacher and students) and a classroom environment. The negative evaluation by the teachers or peers would make students lose their speaking confidence as well.
Although the illustration of the findings above showed that students could participate in the speaking class, Stage 4 reflected that only half participants, classes A and B, who got improved in their speaking performance. The limited space for students, particularly classes C and D, to explore their speaking demotivated them to speak spontaneously. This evidence is in line with Lazarton (2001) pointing out that students encountered simultaneous demands, such as lack of language repertoire and confidence, for unprepared spontaneous communication. In other words, there should be more scaffold for the two classes (i.e., C and D) to improve their speaking performance, particularly their speaking spontaneity. In response to the existing demands (e.g., cognitive loads and anxiety) in this speaking class, we had to remedy the interventions providing students with more language opportunities and practices. To engage students" conversational spontaneity in anxiety-free speaking tasks, we added modified role playing and speaking circles. As seen in Figure 10, the supermarket simulation helped students become more active speakers, playing a role as a clerk or a customer. This activity exposed more their spoken languages in a variety of topics, such as conversational practices at a clothes shop and a drugstore. This situation scaffolded students to get familiar with a variety of spoken language features commonly used by clerks and customers. Equally important, this task design could decrease students" demotivation to speak up because all students were engaged in this supermarket simulation through a small group interaction: between customers and a clerk and among customers. A study by Cao (2011) showed that small group interaction could lessen students" speaking anxiety because a number of students participated actively in a communication reducing peer pressure (e.g., peer"s negative evaluation). Additionally, this situation created equal perceived conversational practices among students which could improve their emotional engagement to speak English and maintain their speaking spontaneity (Cao, 2011;Willis, 2015).

Emotional engagement and speaking circles
We focused on two classes with the low speaking performance, Class C and Class D as depicted in Figure 1. For this reason, modified role playing and speaking circles: the supermarket simulation and bringing students to a "Woody Kitchen" were implemented as a pedagogical proposal to build students" speaking spontaneity. This played a pivotal role in this speaking classroom because it provided students with a myriad of language exposure that students could explore. As they engaged in the supermarket simulation emotionally, for instance, it showed a significant improvement in the area of speaking spontaneity. Some students highlighted on their personal narratives on Facebook (underlined responses represent its theme with the similar color, related to emotional engagement and speaking circle).
What the students jotted down on SFG (see Figures 3-9) shows how they were engaged emotionally in speaking circles (as visualized in Figure 10). The students were more encouraged to speak spontaneously dealing with various topics because speaking circles provided them with multiple themes of the conversation. The notion of "speaking circles" has been inspired by a current work on literature circles (See Widodo, 2016a). Widodo (2016a, p. 357) emphasized that literature circles "can create a learning atmosphere that emphasizes the learning of integrated language skills", such as listening, speaking (e.g., presentation and discussion), reading, and writing. Thus, the speaking circles scaffolded and helped the students understand features of spoken language because they explored them in a myriad of spontaneous communication with others.  Each place (e.g., conversational practices at a clothes shop and a drugstore) as shown in Figure 10 also became the learning platform for students to engage and develop more their speaking spontaneity. As one student of Class C remarked, "the activity was creative, interesting, changing students not to be nervous. New experience, improve fluency, use strategy to speak up, provide more opportunities to speak up." Teachers" photovoice-mediated reflection (See Appendix 1 on Photovoice Analysis) also revealed how modified role play and speaking circles totally brought students into real-life experiences. Furthermore, the changes in their speaking performance can be seen in the Table 3 after the students experienced asemester-long speaking class. This table emphasizes how they evaluated their progress concerning their speaking anxiety (see no. 1, 2, 4, and 7), speaking spontaneity (see no. 2, 5, 6, and 11), and fluency (see no. 1, 3, and 8-11).
Copyright © 2018, IJAL, e-ISSN: 2502-6747, p-ISSN:2301-9468  Based on the last close-ended questionnaire and one personal narrative shared through SFG (See  Figures 3-9 and Table 3), modified role playing and speaking circles were successfully implemented which showed a significant improvement in students" speaking performance. Both modified role playing and speaking circles aroused students" motivation to speak spontaneously in large classes, for the two tasks provided a number amount of language exposure in effective and fruitful English courses (Aliakbari & Jamalvandi, 2010;Dorathy & Mahalakshmi, 2011;Dörnyei, 2001). Likewise, "Role play can become both real and surreal play: students must consider what authentic language use is, but they also have some room for experimentation. We would argue that this space between practice and play is fertile ground for cognitive and linguistic growth" (Shapiro and Leopold, 2012, p. 127). As a result, conversational practices through modified role play and speaking circles can be learning platforms for language teachers to build and enhance students" speaking spontaneity.

PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSION
Five pedagogical implications can be drawn from the findings of the study. First, the teaching of student-centered speaking should be of priority in EFL large classes. It aims to provide students with a wide range of opportunities in a spoken language practice. Second, these opportunities democratize the ways students systematize their speech production in conceptualizing, formulating, and articulating ideas into spoken texts. As a result, students are engaged as problem solvers as they proceed with negotiation during conversational practices because they are encouraged to survive in English communication. Fourth, it is also insufficient to provide students with merely a task, but how then a teacher as a curriculum designer engages students in a variety of speaking tasks in a motivating manner. Finally, speaking spontaneity can be promoted by a means of "speaking circle." In this speaking circle, students are encouraged to engage in simultaneous communication activities with each other familiarizing them in a particular context of situation, which make them feel secured in doing speaking tasks. Viewed from a language appraisal, the need of security and trust from both their peers and teachers "could build an anxiety reduced atmosphere" (Widodo, 2015b, p. 180).
To conclude, promoting speaking spontaneity in a large class requires teacher"s creativity in order to cope with complexities in a large class. This creativity manages students" emotion and triggers their "creativity acquisition device" (CAD) (Widodo, Budi, & Wijayanti, 2016), which encourages them with positive "social relationship goals" as a way of empowerment for successful learning in a classroom (Davis, Summers, & Miller, 2012). This situation is labelled as a relational engagement, which "provides a strong motivational foundation for cognitive and behavioral engagement in school contexts" (Ford 1992, as cited in Davis, Summers, & Miller, 2012, p.26). This can cope with the complexities of speaking in a large class. Despite these advantages, a future study is necessary to explore more investigation into how teaching speaking spontaneity can be implemented in other speaking domains, such as a speech or an oral presentation. This future agenda can examine to which extent students develop their speaking repertoire manifested multimodally in a certain situation (Widodo, 2015b) and in other EFL or ESL contexts.