Teaching Unplugged: Does it have the Potential to Improve EFL Students’ Speaking skills in a Writing Class?

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he present study attempted to investigate the effect of unplugged teaching of writing on EFL majors’ speaking as well as essay writing skills. All level-one EFL students enrolled in the writing 1 (code: 1606110) course at the College of Education and Arts, Northern Borders University, Saudi Arabia, participated in this study. They were randomly divided into an experimental and a control group. Unplugged teaching of writing was used with the experimental group students, whereas students of the control group were taught in the usual way by using the prescribed writing book. A pre-post speaking test and a pre-post writing test were used to assess participants’ speaking and essay writing skills. Results revealed that experimental group students outperformed their counterparts of the control group in both speaking and essay writing skills. Based on these findings, it was recommended that teaching unplugged, if not implemented alone, could be used as a complement, not a replacement for the coursebook-based lessons. In addition, a radical change should be made in EFL teachers’ convictions, from viewing their roles as conferrers of knowledge to that of mentors, from controllers to facilitators. Moreover, EFL teachers are recommended to return to the basics of their job, to scrutinize their resources, and to realize that they do not need to depend on a coursebook or on an interactive whiteboard to be effective teachers. They need to liberate themselves from their slavish dependence on materials, and newly invented digital gadgets and to return English language teaching to its roots by using instructional practices which are more conversation-driven and materials-light.