Abstract:
Writing centers have been gaining great attention in the last couple of decades due to
their great impact when it comes to improving learners’ writing skills while providing
proper assistance and guidance on their writing assignments. Additionally, though
speaking centers are not as popular as writing centers, they could still play a major and
similar role to writing centers when it comes to improving learners’ speaking skills. This
has become a crucial aspect in today’s world due to the importance English plays in the
academic interface and the workforce. Hence, this paper argues that speaking centers
should be established in universities alongside writing centers to ensure learners’ success
when it comes to oral communication. To do so, this study attempted to collect and
analyze data related to how learners at a higher education institute in Lebanon perceive
writing and speaking centers and how faculty thinks these centers can assist them. Results
show that the existing writing center required some improvements to ensure it is
beneficial to all students. Additionally, speaking centers were revealed to be extremely
crucial improve students’ overall speaking skills. Finally, future research is encouraged to
take gender and students’ year level into consideration when analysing variables such as
speaking anxiety and fluency.
