INVESTIGATING THE SILENT SPEECH AFFECTING THE ESP STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE IN LEARNING ENGLISH LANGUAGE: A CASE STUDY AT UNIVERSITY OF PHAN THIET

Tóm tắt

Silent speech is increasingly recognized as a significant factor in Second Language Acquisition (SLA). This topic has attracted considerable attention in recent years and has been examined by various scholars in related studies. The aim of this study focuses on exploring the degree of contribution and the correlation between silent speech and academic performance of ESP university students. To collect data, a questionnaire was designed for a population of 110 participants. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25 was employed to determine whether there was a statistically significant correlation between the variables. In particular, Pearson’s r and Multiple Regression were conducted to analyze the data. The results revealed a significant negative correlation between silent speech and academic performance at the 0.01 level. Furthermore, the two hypotheses were rejected based on the results. In contrast, silent speech was identified as a significantly negative predictor of academic performance; specifically, internalized silent speech behaviors (e.g., excessive inner speech, lack of verbal participation) were the strongest predictors, with the highest negative regression coefficients (B = -.339; B = -.323; B = -.328). Overall, the results indicated that silent speech accounted for approximately 46% of the variance in academic performance. This suggests that the remaining 54% may be influenced by other unidentified variables. Additionally, the overall model (M1) demonstrated a Large Effect Size (L) in this study. This implies that as silent speech tendencies among ESP students increase, their academic performance tends to decrease. To mitigate this issue, it is recommended that teachers establish a supportive and interactive classroom environment to encourage verbal participation and reduce excessive reliance on silent speech.