From Writing to Speaking: Lessons Learned From Writing Centers to Establish Speaking Centers

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.