Development of communicative skills of future english teachers at the Communication Cafe

Abstract

This study aims to discuss aspects related to teacher education, especially regarding the development of the communicative skills of two scholarship holders as future English teachers, through reflective journals. In this study, we understand that communication encompasses not only linguistic ability, but also affective, social, and pedagogical dimensions discussed in the conception of the term Willingness to Communicate (WTC) by MacIntyre and Legatto (2011). The reflective writing of journals carried out by the two scholarship students allowed the team to analyze their trajectory as collaborators of the Communication Café critically. The Communication Café is an extension project that has promoted English conversation practice at UESB since 2014. Through the analysis of excerpts from the journals and their correlation with the theoretical texts studied, it became evident that teaching practice during training is influenced by affectivity, pedagogical intentionality, and the exercise of active listening. The reflective journals proved to be a tool for self-discovery that led the scholarship holders to plan meetings more carefully, seeking to motivate the participants' engagement based not exclusively on the choice of interesting activities, but also by ensuring topics they felt comfortable discussing.