English Speaking Competence Research Articles

Enhancing English Speaking Competence for Vocational Students: Descriptive Qualitative Analysis

This research explores the critical need for speaking skills and competencies in English in the context of vocational education. Through a comprehensive exploration of language skills, linguistics and literature, human resource management, and the role of learning organizations, this study provides an in-depth understanding of the important role of literacy in English in vocational education. The findings reveal that English proficiency is not just an advantage but an absolute necessity for vocational students in today's increasingly connected world. English serves as a gateway to a wide range of global information, collaboration with international peers, and participation in a wider professional network. Effective communication in English is now a prerequisite in the job market, with recruiters in various industries looking for candidates who have strong English-speaking skills. In addition, the study emphasizes that the linguistic and literary dimensions in English proficiency not only deepen communication skills but also increase cultural awareness. By understanding the nuances of language, vocational students can navigate a diverse professional environment with cultural sensitivities, which is an invaluable trait in the global world of work. Learner organizations play an important role as champions of change, influencing curriculum development and resource allocation to support English language education for vocational students

Impact of Teaching Oral Communication Strategies to Engineering Students at a South-Western Nigerian University

This study sought to examine the impact of teaching oral communication strategies on a cohort of ESL learners studying at the engineering faculty of a university in Lagos State of Nigeria. A quasi-experimental design was adopted to identify the cause-and-effect relationship between the teaching of oral communication strategies and the participants’ use of those strategies. Hence, an English-speaking task was administered twice to a group of seven undergraduate engineering students who, through snowball sampling, were non-randomly chosen from the engineering faculty at the aforementioned university. In-between the two phases of the speaking task, a four-hour training session on the use of oral communication strategies was conducted. Data were then collected through the participants’ responses to the spoken task and were transcribed and coded according to Tarone’s communication taxonomy. Using an independent sample t-test to analyse the data, the findings revealed a statistically significant increase in the participants’ use of oral communication strategies after the training. This implies that teaching oral communication strategies is impactful in improving the participants’ English-speaking competence. The research is concluded with a recommendation for further studies with large samples for more generalisable findings. This research will inform language education policy makers of the need to heighten second language learners’ and teachers’ awareness of oral communication strategies use via their incorporation in the language curriculum.

The Impact of Mobile-Assisted Social Language Learning Activities on Speaking Skills and Self-Efficacy Development

In traditional English as a foreign language (EFL)-speaking classes, students have insufficient time and opportunities to practice [1]. In addition, they lack cultural and communicative contexts [2] to improve their speaking skills. Furthermore, a large number of students, especially in Asian countries, have low self-efficacy with regard to their English speaking competence and try to avoid any activities that require speaking in public [3]. In this study, we designed social language learning (SLL) activities to bridge the abovementioned gaps and developed a mobile-assisted social language learning system to support students' participation in SLL activities. We explored how our SLL activities affect language learners' speaking performance and self-efficacy and investigated their social language learning networks and perceived acceptance of the mobile-assisted SLL system. Fifty-eight graduate students were recruited for the study and randomly divided into two groups: a control group in which students completed assigned tasks using the traditional method and an experimental group in which students completed assigned tasks using the mobile SLL system. Our results showed that while the speaking skills of students in the two groups improved after the study, the learning gains of the experimental students in EFL fluency, lexis, pronunciation, and content were significantly better than those of the control students. The experimental students significantly outperformed their counterparts on the dimension of culturality, authenticity, and abundance of created verbal content. The self-efficacy of the experimental students was much better than that of the control students. The results also showed that the interaction degree of the experimental students improved, and they positively perceived applications of the mobile-assisted SLL system to EFL learning. Based on the results, several suggestions and precautions were proposed for educators and researchers in the field to consider.

Building English speaking competence of intending higher education institutions teachers

Building English speaking competence of intending higher education institutions teachers

The Effects of Online Production-Oriented Approach (POA) on Chinese Undergraduates’ English Speaking Competence Development During COVID-19 Pandemic Era

The Covid-19 pandemic has expedited Online Teaching and Learning (OTL) following a sudden closure of academic institutions. Although within the past years, POA was fully developed and expanded in various projects that yielded fruitful college English learning results (Matsuda, 2017), recently, in the learning and practice of Oral English by Chinese undergraduates, there are distinct drawbacks and issues affecting language learning. This paper attempts to apply POA to Chinese undergraduates' oral English classes based on OTL during the covid-19 pandemic, specifically focusing on whether POA can increase the effectiveness of oral English learning for undergraduates. Data analysis of both the pre and post-tests revealed significant improvement in the experimental class and minimal improvement in the controlled class. Students' pronunciation, vocabulary, and fluency improved in the experimental group. It is implied that the POA application was effective in enhancing Chinese undergraduates' speaking skills. Some suggestions are put forth to enhance the application of online POA during the covid-19 pandemic era.

Corrective Feedback In Eap Speaking Class

Research on Oral Corrective Feedback, especially related to its factors, has become a topic that is still widely discussed in teaching English because various application contexts will produce different conclusions. That is why it is important to study this topic further where this research aims to test a group by applying a single pretest-posttest method by providing oral Corrective Feedback. The participants in this study were a lecturer and 27 students in a Speaking English for Academic Purposes (ESP) class at the State Islamic University in Malang, East Java. The results showed an increase in the mean score from the pretest to the posttest. This means that giving Corrective Feedback provides benefits during the learning process for students in improving. Several factors in Corrective Feedback can explain how students respond to the Corrective Feedback given so that Corrective Feedback can play a significant role in improving the competence of speaking English. It is hoped that by understanding the use of Corrective Feedback, teachers, lecturers and educational practitioners will better understand which types of Corrective Feedback can have a positive impact on improving English speaking competence for English learners as a foreign language.

Descriptive study to assess the factors influencing the level of confidence in English speaking among first year nursing students in selected school and college of nursing

With the world changing to a village, the use of English language, and most importantly, the English speaking competence is becoming more important. Looking at its importance, students of every field are required to have high oral proficiency. However, we find that undergraduate students show less desire to speak English during the speaking classes. When it comes to oral communication, they still cannot communicate effectively and confidently. There might be many factors involved that stops them from communicating.Aim: Descriptive Study to assess the factors influencing the level of confidence in English speaking among first year Nursing Students in Selected School and College of Nursing At Madurai was carried out.Methodology: 65 samples were selected using Purposive Sampling Technique. A self- administered questionnaires for demographic variables and Four point Rating scale was used to assess the level of confidence in English speaking among first year Nursing Students. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze the data.Result: Data interpretation revealed, (38.46%) had Low confidence, (61.54%) had Moderate confidence, (0.00%) had High confidence. There is significant association between the factors influencing student confidence in English speaking and the willingness in Nursing.Conclusion: The study emphasis that most of the undergraduate students on entering into the higher studies struggle in communication as the medium of education at college level is in English. English should be taught and training should be given to improve their speaking skills, so that their confidence level and challenges to encounter their studies can be met.

INDIVIDUAL FACTORS OF MEDICAL PHD STUDENTS' ENGLISH COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE.

The aim: The paper is aimed to find correlations between English language communicative academic and medical competence components (theoretical, practical, and individual by certain methods), to improve design of the course "Academic English for PhDs in Medicine", its methods and strategy. Materials and methods: The study sample includes postgraduate groups studying for PhD in Healthcare, aged 21-59 years, in Bukovinian State Medical University (39 respondents), Zaporizhzhia State Medical University (32 respondents), Kharkiv Medical Academy of Postgraduate Education (33 respondents), and Bogomolets National Medical University (318 respondents). The study was held in 2019-2023. We assessed theoretical and practical components using our tests, individual component - psychological methods. The values of three components were transformed into general English communicative academic and medical competence level. The data were treated with SPSS Statistica 18.0, using Spearman correlation significance. Results: We found positive correlation between English communicative competence and communicative tolerance, general communicative skills level, and high or medium communicative control level. Also, positive correlation characterizes interaction as a conflict-resolving strategy and communicative competence. Highly manifested intolerance in communication, predominance of negative mindsets, intolerance to stress negatively affect the level of English communicative academic and professional competence of PhD students. Conclusions: Analysis of the English speaking competence, and its components, showed positive correlation between interaction as a conflict-resolving strategy and English communicative competence of respondents. Regarding the results, the curriculum of the "Academic English for Medical PhDs" should be modified, including interactive methods, case studies, problem solving, and other methods for individual component training.

Students’ Perception of Learning Media using Londo Kampung Vlog

This study aims at determining students' perceptions of learning English using Londo Kampung vlog as a learning media to develop the speaking skill. The theoretical framework focuses on the concept of vlogs and English-speaking competence. It is a qualitative case study with statements as the data, and the data source is interviews with 14 of 11th grade students, SMA Sejahtera Surabaya, the data collection technique is structural interviews, and the data analysis technique is descriptive. The results showed that students have a positive perception of using Londo Kampung vlogs as learning media to improve speaking skills in English.

TASK-BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING (TBLT) TO INCREASE ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILL OF INDONESIAN SECONDARY HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

The aim of this study is to investigate the benefits and challenges of Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) in the development of students’ speaking ability in Indonesian Secondary School Context. This study used comprehensive literature review from various sources. From the discussion, it is informed that TBLT is useful to increase English speaking competence of students. Firstly, TBLT is applicable to fosters students’ oral fluency. Secondly, TBLT can improves the speaking accuracy of students. Thirdly, TBLT helps students to enhance their speaking confidence. However, several challenges need to be addressed by the English teachers in order to use TBLT effectively. The finding of this study provides valuable literature for English teachers in Indonesia regarding the use (benefits and challenges) of TBLT to teach speaking skill.

Facilitating EFL Students’ Development of Speaking Skills through Cue Card Media

This paper aims to investigate the use of Cue Card Media to facilitate the improvement in the English speaking competence through storytelling based on the recount text at the grade 10 students of SMK 1 public vocational high school using Cue Card Media. This Classroom Action Research employed four main stages by Kemmis and McTaggart’s (2014) model, including planning, action, observation, and reflection. The present proposed CAR study was undertaken at the SMK 1 public vocational high school Gorontalo as the site for this study, with the grade ten students majoring the program stream of travel business or Usaha Perjalanan Wisata (henceforth UPW) being the subject of this study. The data in this research were collected by using several instruments, to include checklist observation, questionnaire, and speaking test. Further, the analysis reports of this CAR study relied heavily upon the qualitative interpretation, whilst quantitative served to strengthen the qualitative data interpretations. The results found that the application of the Cue Card successfully enhanced students’ speaking skills by 26.28% statistically, with 55.56% in the first cycle and 81.84% in the second cycle. Following the open-ended survey questionnaires, it appeared that due to the efficacy of Cue Cards, these attractive speaking media benefitted students when it comes to speaking performance activities, yet the drawbacks of Cue Card learning media in speaking were also recognized. Discussions as to how Cue Cards may develop the practice of speaking instruction were also provided. This study adds to the growing pool of literature on the Cue Card implementation in the teaching of speaking skills in English.

Movies as an authentic input in L2 speaking class: A Dynamic Usage-Based approach in EFL teaching in Indonesia

One of the characteristics of a Dynamic Usage-Based (DUB) approach to the second language is schematic patterns emerge through use and interaction where the intense focus is in input. Video or movie as an example of authentic input often provides a natural context for conversations to emerge among the students and teacher in class since students want to know or share their opinions about the characters or events in the movie. This recent study's objective was to demonstrate that movies or videos provide an authentic input in L2 class. This study's population sample was 30 students of the second-year English Education program in 2021 at Artha Wacana Christian University Kupang in Indonesia. A simple random sampling technique was applied to select this sample. The study was conducted over 12 teaching periods using the DUB approach, where the procedure was processed by a pre-test, treatment, and ended by post-test. The instruments used in this study were speaking class lesson plans and English speaking tests (both pre-test and post-test). The Mean and Paired Sample T-Test was employed in the data analysis. The result shows a significant difference between students' English speaking competence taught using movies and those taught using a conventional method. Therefore, using movies in classroom teaching is in line with the DUB approach as one of its principles is authentic input.

Movie Exploratory Study for Appropriate Cultural Contents for Enhancing Thai EFL Students’ English-Speaking Skills and Intercultural Communicative Competence

Currently, English is regarded as the global language used in communication by people in multicultural backgrounds, and language and culture are inseparable. Therefore, teaching and learning English need to address the cultural knowledge and develops the learners’ skills of intercultural communicative competence through authentic texts. Movies provide rich cultural content with real language used for communication contexts. This paper intends to investigate problems and needs of Thai EFL students in developing English speaking skills and intercultural communicative competence (ICC), and to explore appropriate English movies with cultural contents for enhancing students’ English speaking and intercultural communicative competence. The participants, 65 in total are divided into three group involving experts in movie fields, English teachers, and students in undergraduate level who enrolled for English for Communication. The research instruments employed in this research consists of the Needs Analysis Survey Questionnaire for Teaching and Learning English and Intercultural and Movie Exploratory Survey Questionnaire. The results revealed that the students realized the importance of learning English and culture and they indicate that they would feel more confident in communicating in English in reality. However, they lacked opportunity to expose to using English in the real context. The study also found top ten English movies which provide fruitful English language communication and cultural contents in the movie scenes for developing Thai EFL students to learn English speaking and intercultural communicative competence. EFL teachers, course designers, or language educators can make use of these findings for developing the curricula or revise existing English curricula to suit needs and problems of students and integrating the list of movies with cultural contents for enhancing Thai EFL learners’ communicative competence.

DISTANCE TECHNOLOGIES IN THE PROCESS OF FORMING THE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE COMPETENCE OF FUTURE ENGINEERS

The urgency of forming English-speaking competence through distance technologies is caused by modern requirements of training specialists in the technical sphere and epidemiological situation in the world. The article aims to define the essence of English-speaking competence formation through distance technologies. In order to realise the defined goal, it is essential to solve the following tasks: 1) to substantiate the essence of the process of formation of English-speaking competence with application of distance technologies; 2) to analyse the specificity of formation of English-speaking competence of future engineers in the course of the use of distance technologies at English lessons. Distance technologies of developing English-speaking competence of future engineers are considered as a set of forms and methods aimed at forming and improving the competence of reading, translation, listening of authentic audio texts, video texts, scientific articles; improving the competence of English-speaking written speech; systematisation of English-speaking grammar competence through tests with the help of distance platforms and Internet-resources. It was found that English-language professional competence integrates knowledge of professional terminological vocabulary, skills of working with English-language professional texts and documents, and background knowledge of socio-cultural features of the language under study. The author proposes goals for the use of distance learning technologies in the course “Academic English”.

English Intercultural Tutorial for University Students Majoring in Japanese

This paper is the first attempt to present the implementation results of the language-learning tutorial based on intercultural and communicative approaches in a classical university in Ukraine. The authors present a new tutorial method for teaching English at Departments of the Far East Languages in Classical Universities of Ukraine. This method is aimed to facilitate the acquisition of essential aspects of knowledge about a country as a regional and cultural subject as well as to improve students’ English speaking and conversational skills. The experimental research involved 2nd and 3rd year university students majoring in the Japanese and English languages. The authors proposed the original design of the tutorial to be used both for English speaking practice and as a part of the course content. Considering the psycholinguistic peculiarities of Ukrainian students to percept and understand the English and East Asian languages, the tutorial under review stimulates students’ cognitive activity during the English learning process and when developing sociocultural competence with regard to the Far East. Compare and Contrast activities in the English language classroom can create a favourable learning environment resulting in students gaining knowledge and acquiring skills necessary for proficient English users. At the same time, they get the opportunity to pick up more information about Japan using the sources about the country available in the English language. The ability to categorise and compare things in terms of their differences and similarities corresponds to the main stages of cognitive development. Compare and contrast as teaching and learning strategies can be applied when teaching monologic and dialogic production, in particular when discussing similarities and differences of cultural, natural, geographical, historical, political and art objects of Ukraine and Japan. In this article, the interdependence between the use of the tutorial method and academic achievements in English speaking competence has been proved, since the students have significantly improved their speaking fluency in English about the Far East.

Teaching the CLIL technology to rising IT teachers

ABSTRACT The study is devoted to the definition of educational effects of introducing the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) technology in master's programs. A pedagogical model of teaching the CLIL methodology is described; the development of the “CLIL for IT teachers” course is based on it. An experiment that involved 62 graduate students was carried out. The following mobile applications were used in the development of the CLIL course for IT Teachers: FluentU: Language Learning App, Basic Computer Fundamental, Learn computer in 30 days, Computer Basic Course, Online courses from HowTech, Computer Dictionary English, Learn Word, Excel & PowerPoint. The effective synergy of the model's elements made it possible to simulate a high-quality learning environment that promoted targeted learning, social educational cooperation, and creative expression of students, while spontaneously forming an English-speaking communication competence adaptive to different business scenarios. During the participation in the educational experiment, students not only developed a personal educational product – Fundamentals of Informatics – but also significantly improved their English professional communication competence. The described experience can be of interest to educators who are in search of effective pedagogical technologies and digital tools that improve the quality of their professional activities.

Immersing Japanese students into English language learning: Songs, games and cultures

Learning English for Japanese is not as easy as people think. Teachers should provide a way to immerse Japanese students. Therefore, this study aimed to understand how Japanese English teachers immersed students in learning English, what challenges that students and teachers were facing and their perceptions toward the International Work Camp. This case study collected the data from 20 students and 10 teachers from various countries using interviews and an observation checklist. The data were analyzed in several steps, starting from data collection, data reduction, data display to data conclusion. The findings of this study show that Japanese and non-Japanese teachers collaborated to immerse students in attractive teaching ways, such as drilling techniques, gaming, singing, using cards, playing outside, grouping, etc. Besides, teachers also kept motivating and reinforcing them to speak English. Furthermore, students’ barriers in speaking were pronunciation, anxiety, grammar, vocabulary, and less practice. Problems were not only faced by students as teachers also had hindrances. Therefore, through the International Work Camp, students could learn to speak English effectively. They could interact with other students and get English speaking competence immersion with several native English teachers. The students also had good perceptions of this work camp.

A Survey of Non-English Majors' English Listening and Speaking Competence

The teaching goal of College English Curriculum Requirements issued by the Ministry of Education is to cultivate college students' comprehensive English application ability, especially listening and speaking ability, so that they can communicate effectively in English in their future study, work and social interaction. Listening and speaking is an important means of communication. With the acceleration of the process of global economic integration, the demand for applied talents of foreign languages is increasing.Non-English major students also need to have a certain degree of English listening and speaking ability, in order to communicate with foreigners, so as to better work and study. However, the current situation of non-English majors' English listening and speaking ability is not optimistic, so the non-English majors' English listening and speaking ability has been the focus of social attention.And the existing research is also insufficient, so this study from the English listening and speaking foundation, English classroom, autonomous learning three aspects to study the non-English major college students' English listening and speaking ability and its promotion measures.In the investigation, it is found that the non-English majors in our university are poor in English listening and speaking. The main reasons are as follows: under the guidance of the examination-oriented English education, the university does not attach importance to English listening and speaking education, so the students have a poor foundation in listening and speaking;College English common course can not make students' English listening and speaking ability to be effectively improved;Students' desire to learn English listening and speaking independently is not strong and the efficiency of autonomous learning is not high.The main countermeasures are to improve English education in basic education, to enhance the quality of college English class, and to teach students effective autonomous learning strategies, to encourage students to enhance their motivation of English listening and speaking learning.

Second Language Acquisition Theory and English Speaking Teaching

Based on the second language acquisition theory, this paper simply introduced Krashen's the Acquisition-Input Hypothesis and the Affective Filter Hypothesis, and proposed to apply the second language acquisition theory to English speaking teaching, considering the status quo and existing problems of English speaking teaching in colleges and universities, in order to improve the students' English speaking competence by means of comprehensible input, good teacher-student relationship, and efficient output training and thus enhance the quality of English speaking teaching.

Experimental research on the formation of future ship engineers' communicative competence based on gamification approach

The articles is devoted to the experimental research on the of English-language communicative competence formation of future ship engineers. The method of usage of gamification approach to form the communicative competence is proposed. The model of English-language communicative competence formation based on gamification which includes target, normative, methodological, procedural, substantive and evaluative-effective blocks is described. The article also shows the experimental research results which confirm the effectiveness of the developed structural model of English-speaking competence of future ship engineers and the methods of its formation.