Audio Recordings as a Tool for Developing Speaking Skills in Foreign Language Teaching

This study investigates how preparing individual audio recordings influences university students’ speaking skills in German as a foreign language and their emotions associated with oral communication. The participants were Slovak undergraduates from various humanities disciplines enrolled in a German for Specific Purposes course at B1–C1 levels at the Faculty of Arts, Comenius University, Bratislava. Students in their fourth semester attended a German course offered either as a compulsory or elective subject. The course focused on developing academic language skills, including defining concepts, describing graphs, and applying citation practices, while preparing students to deliver subject-specific presentations in German. The study group was the first cohort to return to fully in-person instruction after pandemic-related restrictions. Using a mixed-methods design, data were collected from an initial and a final online questionnaire combining Likert-scale items with open-ended questions, as well as from four learner-produced audio recordings per student. The study compares students’ self-perceptions of speaking in their first foreign language, English, and their second foreign language, German, and examines changes in perceived effort, stress and communicative competence over one semester. The findings show that, although students became more aware of the effort and stress involved in spontaneous speaking in German, they reported clear gains in several areas of speaking competence. Audio recordings were perceived to improve fluency, speed of lexical retrieval, use of previously passive and newly learned vocabulary, grammatical accuracy and confidence in speaking. Students also highlighted the role of recordings in overcoming inner barriers to speaking and in fostering reflection on their own learning processes and communicative abilities.