Assemblies as a didactic resource to improve oral skills in English as a foreign language: a comparison between bilingual and non-bilingual students in Primary Education

Abstract

Class assembly, despite being a didactic resource that allows the development of social, civic and linguistic competences of the students in all educational stages, is usually limited to its practice in Early Childhood Education. This is why it is paradoxical that the assembly is little exploited in Primary Education, taking into account its use for the development of oral competence in the English language. After explaining the meaning of the use of the assembly for the development of language skills (with special attention to foreign language skills), this article shows that it is an effective teaching resource for the improvement of oral production and reception, both for pupils in bilingual and non-bilingual programmes. The aim of this work, therefore, is to compare the development of oral skills in English before and after a didactic intervention by means of an assembly in two schools, a bilingual school and a non-bilingual school, in the province of Córdoba (Spain), and to analyse whether there are significant differences in the progression of bilingual pupils in comparison with non-bilingual ones. The results derived from the implementation show that the assembly is a tool that allows to improve the oral linguistic competence in English of all the participants, resulting in a greater impact among the bilingual students.