The concept of active listening as a facilitator in developing speaking skills
Roč.15,č.2(2025)
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.
active listening; English for Academic Purposes; empathy; soft skills for engineers; speaking skills; Theory-Guided Communicative Instruction; classroom active research
Martina Vránová
FSI VUT Brno
Martina Vránová obdržela titul Ph.D. v oboru literární komparatistiky na Masarykově Univerzitě v Brně v roce 2010. V současné době působí jako odborná asistentka na Ústavu jazyků na Fakultě strojního inženýrství VUT v Brně. Již více než patnáct let učí angličtinu pro specifické účely. Její další výzkum zahrnuje akademické psaní, rétoriku a současnou literaturu. Editovala svazky Languages for Specific Purposes in Higher Education (2017), Crime and Detection in Contemporary Culture (2018) a New to the LSP classroom? A selection of monographs on successful practices (2023). Také publikovala romány a povídky v češtině.
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