Open AccessReticence is not a Virtue in Aviation: Improving English Speaking Proficiency of Future Aviation Specialists
Author(s) -
Liudmyla Herasymenko,
Svitlana Muravska,
Maryna Lomakina,
Nadiia Martynenko,
Юлія Мазуренко
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
revista românească pentru educaţie multidimensională
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2067-9270
pISSN - 2066-7329
DOI - 10.18662/rrem/13.2/433
Subject(s) - aviation , syllabus , vocabulary , psychology , aircraft maintenance , control (management) , mathematics education , medical education , pedagogy , engineering , computer science , aeronautics , linguistics , medicine , philosophy , artificial intelligence , aerospace engineering
English language proficiency is a vital requirement for air-to-groundcommunication for aviation specialists. A special attention should be paid to developingspeaking skills of future pilots, air traffic controllers and engineers. Our researchhas shown that future aviation specialists come across certain challenges in the processof communication in English: insufficient aviation knowledge to give an opinion, lowmotivation to speak, poor grammatical skills and insufficient knowledge of vocabularyitems, uneven participation in discussions, and fear of making mistakes. To overcomethese challenges some recommendations were formulated for teachers to follow. Theproblem-solving activities were chosen and designed to enhance students’ speakingskills. They include value-clarification tasks, discussions, role-plays, information-gapactivities, describing pictures, and discussing videos. This research aims to define theimpact of applying these problem-solving activities on developing students’ speakingskills. 120 second year students in aviation specialties took part in this experiment.They were divided into a control and an experimental group of equal numbers. In bothgroups, the teachers taught the same Aviation English content which corresponded to thesyllabus. In addition, in the experimental group the teacher implemented theproblem-solving activities, which contributed significantly to the development of futureaviation specialists’ speaking skills.