"Speaking in English for students in the pre-school teacher curriculum" - creating an English-speaking course for university students in the pre-school teacher curriculum

Abstract

The current thesis aims at compiling an optional English-speaking course for university students who are studying to become kindergarten teachers. The created course focuses on developing the learners´ speaking skills in a way that the learners’ self-efficacy and language strategies use both in class and independently outside classroom would increase. The course consists of 3 ECTS for which eight in-person lessons and eight optional Zoom lessons were planned. The course is piloted on a group of pre-service kindergarten teacher students. Qualitative methods were applied to assess the effectiveness of the created course. The course is carried out with eleven kindergarten teacher university students from February 2025 to June 2025 in Narva College of the University of Tartu. A questionnaire of two parts is administered to the students at the beginning, middle and end of the course. Based on the results of the questionnaire initial spikes in regard to willingness to communicate, self-efficacy, learner autonomy, and language learning strategy use could be seen; a viewpoint which is also indicated in the form of classroom observations by the teacher. The thesis consists of two parts. The first part focuses on Learner Autonomy, Self-Efficacy, Language Learning Strategies, Willingness to Communicate, and Course Design, while the second part focuses on the creation and implementation of the course. Keywords: Learner Autonomy (LA), Self-Efficacy (SE), Willingness to Communicate (WTC), Language Learning Strategies (LLS), and Course Design (CD)