Özet:

The purpose of this study is to explore how first-year candidate teachers of English makeuse of an online support to their EFL oral communication courses. The online support consists ofasynchronous speaking and listening activities designed to be completed outside the classroom as asupplementary material. The findings of the study suggest that online support has potentials as asupplementary independent study tool to support oral communication courses. The participantspreferred speaking activities to listening activities. Participants could do most Speak Only activities,namely individual discussion, prompted speech and situational talk without any preparation, exceptfor vocabulary related activities and integrated speaking activities, which required preparation.Integrated speaking-listening activities demanded prior mental or physical preparation. The frequencyand extent of preparation varied across participants, yet the participants employed a variety ofpreparation strategies, including brainstorming, verbatim script writing, contextualization, andkeywords as prompts. Listen and respond could easily be completed by noting new words andlistening to the recording a couple of times, whereas integrated listening-speaking activities requiredintensive listening and note taking. The participants used the activities in the online support mainly toexpand the learning that takes place in the classroom and to revise the relevant content. Previewingwas another reason to use the activities; however, it was not as common as the other two purposes.

Anahtar Kelimeler: