The Effects of Critical Pedagogy and Task-Based Language Teaching on Storytelling and Oral Proficiency: A Comparative Study

Maximizing learning opportunities has long intrigued teaching practitioners and researchers. Therefore, a lot of studies have been conducted on different instructional methodologies to help language learners with utilizing their learning chances. The present comparative study aims at investigating the effects of two instructional procedures, namely Critical Pedagogy (CP) Based Teaching and Task- Based Language Teaching (TBLT) on oral proficiency and storytelling skills of the participants. Thus, 30 Iranian male EFL learners, who were all rated at A1 level on Quick Placement Test (Cambridge, 2001), were selected. All of the learners who aged from 13 to 15 years old were randomly assigned into two research groups of CP and TBLT through convenience and purposive sampling. Pretest/posttest research design was conducted to trace any significant effects of two instructional procedures on storytelling skills and oral proficiency level of the learners before and after 12 sessions of treatment in each research group. Although the results of independent t-tests and effect size indicated impact of each instruction type on learners’ storytelling skills and oral proficiency level, the results failed to show any significant difference between Critical Pedagogy Based Teaching and Task- Based Language Teaching. Implications of the study were also discussed further and suggestions for more research were proposed.