Investigating the Learners’ Communicative Skills in ESL Classes

Abstract

This article focuses on the communicative skills of learners in ESL classes. English conversation plays a crucial role in understanding each other and dealing with different kinds of uncovered problems. This means that not only do the soldiers that I teach need English for communication abroad, but Czech teachers also need English to communicate with them. It is always valuable to have a chat with them and ask questions to make sure our judgement colleagues are native speakers. At my work, I have an opportunity to encounter people from various parts of the world, and I am very interested in the way they use English as their mother tongue. These co-workers have a greater supporting role in our teaching process and were right. Even if they come from America, England, or Australia, and their accents differ, it is just a question of time for teachers and students to adjust to their speech and distinguish differences in pronunciation. Being able to keep a fluent conversation with a native speaker is viewed as the main goal of my students, which underlines the importance of speaking skills from a student´s point of view. Therefore, in my thesis, I decided to concentrate on communicative activities that might be helpful for English teachers and enhance their students´ communicative skills. My thesis is divided into two parts – theoretical and practical. In the theoretical part, I deal with the difference between speaking and conversation and explain its practical use in everyday life. I also aim to highlight the importance of motivation in teaching practice and the techniques and approaches used to enhance students´ desire to speak a foreign language. While dealing with communicative activities, I focused on distinguishing them either as accuracy or fluency activities and provided definitions of these terms. The role of a teacher is also discussed, and useful ideas are suggested to make the speaking lesson as effective as possible. The practical part consists of a set of pre-taught communicative activities described minutely and their evaluation for other teachers who would like to apply them in their speaking lessons.