The purpose of this research is to investigate the effects of two teaching strategies, memorization and improvisation, on ESL (English as a second language) students’ oral proficiency and how they perceived the strategies and the activities used in the classroom. Participants were 16-year-old nursing students in a Taiwan medical college. They had learned English for at least three and a half years before joining the study, but most of their previous learning was focused on reading and writing. They were divided into three groups, experiencing a memorization strategy, an improvisation strategy, and a strategy combining memorization and improvisation respectively. Data were collected from their oral pre-test and post-test, perception questionnaire, perception interview, college-wide satisfaction survey and in-class observation. Data were analysed in both quantitative and qualitative ways. The results showed that each of the strategies had significant positive effects on students’ oral acquisition, but the improvisation group performed significantly better than the memorization group, and the memorization group did better than the combination group. However, the satisfaction and perception surveys showed that participants preferred the combination strategy to the improvisation strategy, and the improvisation strategy was preferred to the memorization strategy. The finding also showed that participants’ initial oral language levels made no difference on the rate of oral improvement. The high-level and intermediate students demonstrated no difference in their preference for the two strategies, but the low-level students showed significant preference for the memorization strategy. In terms of the teaching activities, participants preferred task-based activities to discussion activities, and activities involving multiple people were preferred to monologues such as storytelling and news reports. Nevertheless, preference made no difference on participants’ oral improvement. Based upon the insight gained from this study, pedagogical implications and for teaching oral language were developed and suggestions for future research have been recommended.

Most pupilsin grade 5 and grade 9 pass the oral part of the national exam. The aim of thispaper is to find out when and how often the pupils speak English in theclassroom. There is also a question of when and how often the teachers speak inEnglish and why the teachers make these choices. The studywas carried out by using a questionnaire. The pupils were asked two questionsand the teachers were asked almost the same two questions with the addition offive open questions. 71 fifth graders from four different classes and 94 ninthgraders from four different classes responded. 3 teachers from grade 5 and 4teachers from grade 9 also participated. Theresults show that both the teachers and the pupils use spoken English in avariety of situations such as communication between teacher and pupil and amongpupils. The younger pupils take on a more passive role, like imitating theteacher, but there is a progression from more controlled situations to moreopen situations. There seems to be a more varied, but less regular communicationin the older ages. The teachers want to speak English as much as possible, butoften explain difficult parts in Swedish in order for the pupils to understand.