ECRIF as a Strategy to Boost EFL Students’ Speaking Skills: An Exploratory Action Research Approach

Speaking is one of the most challenging skills to develop in learning and teaching a foreign language. In this regard, several strategies have emerged to enhance oral fluency in English by foreign language students. One is ECRIF, which stands for Encounter, Clarify, Remember, Internalize, and Fluent Use. This Exploratory Action Research aims to investigate the effectiveness of implementing the ECRIF framework to boost the speaking skills of 37 ninth-grade students attending a public school in Ecuador. Moreover, this study also intends to identify the pedagogical work of the teacher adapted to this strategy and the student's response to its implementation. The results show that ECRIF is a practical approach for gradually improving the process of learning speaking skills in a cooperative environment with student-centered activities and that students respond to ECRIF implementation with a high level of motivation as they recognize their development in their speech fluency. These findings can motivate language teachers to consider activities and content from the student learning perspective by incorporating ECRIF in their teaching practice.