Integrated teaching of emotive speech in reading and speaking to German majors at the independent user level

Abstract

Background. Recent trends in foreign language education emphasize the development of communicative competence as an integrated combination of linguistic, pragmatic, sociocultural, and emotional components. Within this framework, the ability to understand and express emotions in a foreign language is crucial, as emotive speech ensures sincerity, expressiveness, and the adequacy of communication in real-life situations. For students of German studies, especially at the B1–B2 level, mastering emotive speech in both receptive (reading) and productive (speaking) skills is a necessary condition for achieving an independent user level. Despite the growing interest in emotional aspects of language, teaching practice often focuses primarily on factual comprehension and grammatical accuracy, leaving emotive information of the text underexplored. As a result, students may demonstrate sufficient lexical and grammatical knowledge yet experience difficulties interpreting the emotional nuances of authentic texts and using emotively marked language in oral communication. This gap highlights the need for an integrated methodological approach that combines reading and speaking activities with a systematic focus on emotive content. The present study is grounded in the assumption that conscious engagement with emotive information at all stages of text processing can significantly improve students' comprehension and expressive abilities.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a methodology for the integrated teaching of emotive speech to German studies students in reading and speaking at the independent user level (B1-B2).

Results and discussion. The implementation of the proposed methodology of integrated teaching of emotive speech in reading and speaking demonstrated positive results and confirmed its effectiveness for students of German studies at the B1-B2 level. The analysis of students' performance showed a significant improvement in their ability to identify, interpret, and evaluate emotive information in authentic texts. Learners became more attentive to emotively marked lexical units, stylistic devices, and contextual emotional cues, which contributed to a deeper and more differentiated understanding of textual content. The results of the postexperimental assessment indicate that the majority of students achieved a high level of comprehension of the text's emotive component, successfully correlating emotions with events, images, and the author's intention. In productive speech activities, students demonstrated an increased frequency and appropriateness of emotively marked language. Notably, approximately 83% of the emotive linguistic means present in the texts were actively used by students in oral communication, which suggests a high degree of transfer from receptive to productive skills. The use of mental maps at the post-text stage proved to be particularly effective. They facilitated the structuring of information, visualization of relationships between factual, conceptual, and emotive layers of the text, and supported the development of coherent and logically organized oral statements. Furthermore, mental mapping stimulated discussion, interpretation, and evaluation of emotional states of the characters and the author's position, fostering argumentation skills and reflective thinking. Overall, the findings confirm that integrating emotive-focused reading tasks with speaking activities enhances both emotional awareness and communicative competence. The proposed methodology promotes conscious engagement with emotive content, develops critical and empathic reading, and encourages meaningful emotional expression in speech. These results support the feasibility of implementing integrated, emotion-oriented instruction in foreign language teaching at the independent-user level.