The attitudes of Slovenian and Croatian students of primary education towards spoken performance in the pedagogical process

Abstract

Communicating in one’s mother tongue is one of the key competencies for lifelong learning. Speech culture implies knowledge of the laws governing voice, grammatical and lexical organization of literary language, proper speech, and stylistics. For the teaching profession, this competence is very important. Communication between teachers and students in teaching must be effective. In this paper, we have studied the attitudes of students at the faculties of teaching in Slovenia and Croatia regarding the importance of speech performance and oral expression of teachers in teaching. A questionnaire was used on a sample of 369 respondents. The aims of the research were to compare the attitudes of Slovenian and Croatian respondents towards their own speaking abilities and the importance of this competence in the profession they will perform, improving their knowledge of that ability, ways of developing spoken skills and possibilities for improving their own expression. We also wanted to see if there were any statistically significant differences between Slovenian and Croatian students regarding their attitudes towards spoken language. The results obtained show that both Slovenian and Croatian respondents are aware of the importance of effective oral expression within the teaching profession. Croatian students evaluate their verbal competencies to be at a higher level than their Slovenian counterparts. By contrast, Slovenian respondents evaluate their knowledge of the criteria and strategies for successful speech performance as better than Croatian students. A difference in attitudes is noticed in the domain of preparation for speech performance and in knowing the rules which have to be respected during public appearances. Since all respondents are aware of the importance of quality oral communication in the classroom, lifelong learning is seen as a fundamental aspect of the profession (teacher).