Publication detail
The concept of active listening as a facilitator in developing speaking skills
VRÁNOVÁ, M.
English title
The concept of active listening as a facilitator in developing speaking skills
Type
Peer-reviewed article not indexed in WoS or Scopus
Language
en
Original abstract
Interpersonal communication skills have been in demand by employers throughout all academic and industrial fields. Successful managers in engineering are expected to master the rules of effective communication in more than one language. While teaching a B1 course of academic English focusing on listening and speaking, I have been dealing with rather heterogeneous groups of students. As the course is voluntary, some students have a high command of English, thus dominating class discussions, while others choose the course because they failed one of the compulsory courses, which means they very often stay silent. To amend this situation, I decided to introduce to concept of active listening into this course by means of Theory-Guided Communicative Instruction. During in‑class discussions, students were given direct input on active listening with the prospect of avoiding two simultaneous monologues with no responses when sharing an experiential independent talk, learning to ask questions, particularly about understanding correctly both the information given and the language used, building confidence in less skillful students by learning to rephrase other students’ ideas, and reducing the talking time of more skillful students by learning to express ideas concisely. The effectiveness of this intervention was assessed by comparing student before-the-course and after-the-course questionnaires, teacher’s in‑class observations, and final examination evaluation. Active listening strategies proved to be a way of redeeming the above‑mentioned challenges even though the disruptions of technology are to remain a phenomenon to cope with and the practice of paraphrasing and commenting needs more targeted training
Keywords in English
active listening; English for Academic Purposes; empathy; soft skills for engineers; speaking skills; Theory-Guided Communicative Instruction; classroom active research
Released
2025-12-31
Volume
2
Number
15
Pages from–to
115–119
Pages count
10
BIBTEX
@article{BUT200384,
author="Martina {Vránová}",
title="The concept of active listening as a facilitator in developing speaking skills",
journal="CASALC Review",
year="2025",
volume="2",
number="15",
pages="115--119",
issn="1804-9435",
url="https://journals.muni.cz/casalc-review/article/view/41812"
}