VIETTESOL INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION 2025

Mastering speaking skill or enhancing oral communicative ability is not only essential for academic purposes, but also for professional ones. However, developing this important skill is, in fact, found to be challenging by most English language teachers. Moreover, from the side of language learners, by being able to speak, it will be easier for them to transfer their thoughts to others; unfortunately, sometimes, students’ utterance failure occurs due to several factors such as vocabulary deficiency, expression inability, and mostly lack of confidence. Therefore, the researcher applied a two-cycle Classroom Action Research (CAR) with wh-word-based response technique to improve students’ speaking ability in expressing their communicative topics. After using instruments: observation sheets, interview guide, and test, 72% of participants were found to have been successfully improving their speaking ability, and they felt more confident in performing the assigned tasks. This means the responding technique was effective in improving the students’ speaking ability. Furthermore, some suggestions are also made for fostering a successful language teaching and learning environment.