HOW TO STUDY THE TEACHING OF SPEAKING SKILLS? PILOT STUDY ON THE EXAMPLE OF A B1-LEVEL ESTONIAN LANGUAGE COURSE FOR ADULTS

Abstract

Many learners of Estonian as a second language find it difficult to acquire speaking skills. Speaking skills are important for coping and working in society, and on the basis of this, a person's language skills are also assessed. Achieving language proficiency at B1-level is especially important because it allows a person to cope independently in everyday life and in several positions. Therefore, the acquisition of speaking skills in language courses is important. In recent years, the need to teach Estonian has increased even more due to immigration. Teachers say they use a communicative approach in language lessons to develop their speaking skills, but what techniques they use in lessons need to be studied. Therefore, in my doctoral thesis, I will study the relationship between the techniques used in language courses that teach speaking skills and the development of speaking skills. In the article, I will give an overview of the pilot study that preceded the main study, during which I created a scale questionnaire and a speaking diary measuring speaking motivation, a test measuring speaking skills and a lesson observation table to record lesson activities that teach speaking skills, and a grading scale to assess speaking skills. I tested all the metrics at the beginning of a B1-level Estonian language course in Ida-Virumaa and at the end of a three-month (63 lessons) observation period, and the lesson observation table in every lesson observation, seven times in total. To test the grading scale, I tried to evaluate the recorded task performances of one of the participants. The results showed the overall suitability of the selected metrics for conducting the main study, but the classification of lesson activities that teach speaking skills still needs to be improved.