The study addressed a persistent problem in teacher preparation: university courses on speech culture often emphasize normative linguistic knowledge, such as grammatical, lexical, phonetic and stylistic rules, without sufficiently integrating their application to authentic pedagogical communication. A student may be able to identify a language error or explain a rule correctly, yet struggle to explain complex material accessibly, respond to a student’s wrong answer, or reorganize an explanation when the communicative situation changes. The researchers argued that professional speech competence therefore extends beyond knowledge of norms to include the ability to select and adapt linguistic resources according to communicative purpose, audience, pedagogical context, and the dynamics of classroom interaction.

To capture this broader construct, the authors conceptualized professional speech competence through four interrelated components. The normative-linguistic component concerns the accurate and appropriate use of lexical, grammatical, phonetic and stylistic norms. The communicative-pragmatic component reflects the ability to choose speech strategies according to communicative purpose, addressee and pedagogical situation. The discursive component concerns the logical, coherent and comprehensible organization of professional utterances, while the interactive component encompasses dialogue management, questioning, clarification, feedback and other forms of teacher–student verbal interaction. Together, these components provided a practice-oriented framework for connecting knowledge of language norms with their application in professional pedagogical communication.

The adapted course did not replace the existing discipline but strengthened its practice-oriented dimension. It was implemented over 15 weeks at K.A. Yasawi International Kazakh-Turkish University in Turkestan and M. Auezov South Kazakhstan Research University in Shymkent, comprising 30 instructional sessions of 50 minutes each, with 15 theoretical and 15 practice-oriented sessions delivered by four instructors. To ensure consistency across the two institutions, the instructors followed the same course structure, instructional sequence, professionally oriented tasks, assessment criteria and methodological guidelines. During the course, students analyzed professional communication situations, formulated questions and instructions, constructed professional utterances, participated in structured teacher–student role-play activities, provided feedback, and reflected on their own speech behaviour, with activities progressing from the application of speech norms to more complex professional communication tasks.

Initially, 180 students enrolled in teacher education programmes in Kazakh language and literature were recruited using convenience sampling. After applying inclusion and exclusion criteria, the final analytical sample consisted of 156 students, or 86.7 percent of those initially recruited, who completed all required stages and provided complete pre-test and post-test data. The remaining 24 participants were excluded because they did not complete one or more study stages or had incomplete assessment data. The study ran from September 2025 to April 2026, and all data were anonymized, with participant identification codes used to match pre-test and post-test results.

Professional speech competence was assessed before and after the course using a specially developed set of tasks organized according to the four components and graded in complexity, from recognizing language norms to independently constructing holistic statements in simulated professional interaction. Responses were evaluated with an analytical rubric on a 0-to-3 scale per component by two trained raters working independently, with inter-rater reliability assessed using the intraclass correlation coefficient; overall agreement was high at ICC = 0.89, with component values between 0.86 and 0.90. Additional tools included a diagnostic test of knowledge of professional speech culture, a test of analysing professional communication situations, a task requiring independent construction of a professional utterance, and self-report scales measuring communicative confidence and tension, speech self-control, and flexibility of professional speech behaviour. A panel of five experts reviewed all instruments for relevance, clarity and professional authenticity before the main stage. The overall professional speech competence measure demonstrated good internal consistency, with Cronbach’s α = 0.86, and the other measures ranged from 0.79 to 0.85.

The results showed statistically significant improvements across all measured outcomes. The overall professional speech competence score increased from M = 7.84 (SD = 1.62) at pre-test to M = 9.72 (SD = 1.48) at post-test, t(155) = 11.46, p < 0.001, corresponding to a large effect size of Cohen’s d = 0.92. The communicative-pragmatic component showed one of the most pronounced improvements, rising from M = 1.91 (SD = 0.55) to M = 2.48 (SD = 0.44), t(155) = 10.94, p < 0.001, d = 0.88. The discursive component increased from M = 1.96 (SD = 0.51) to M = 2.44 (SD = 0.45), t(155) = 9.86, p < 0.001, d = 0.79, the interactive component rose from M = 1.99 (SD = 0.54) to M = 2.41 (SD = 0.47), t(155) = 8.95, p < 0.001, d = 0.72, and the normative-linguistic component improved from M = 1.98 (SD = 0.52) to M = 2.39 (SD = 0.46), t(155) = 8.72, p < 0.001, d = 0.70.

Correlation and path analyses added a structural picture of how the measured characteristics relate. Professional speech competence correlated most strongly with the ability to independently construct a professional statement (r = 0.49) and with the analysis of professional communication situations (r = 0.46), while its association with knowledge of professional speech culture was positive but weaker (r = 0.32), indicating that knowing speech norms and applying them effectively are related but not identical characteristics. Professional speech competence was also positively correlated with communicative confidence (r = 0.28), speech self-control (r = 0.35) and flexibility of professional speech behaviour (r = 0.38), and showed a weak negative correlation with communicative tension (r = −0.18). In the path analysis, which showed good model fit (χ²(4) = 5.21, p = 0.266, CFI = 0.992, SRMR = 0.031, RMSEA = 0.044), the ability to analyse professional communicative situations had the strongest direct association with professional speech competence (β = 0.39, p < 0.001), compared with knowledge of professional speech culture (β = 0.24, p < 0.01). Together these two indicators explained 31.4 percent of the variance in professional speech competence, which in turn was positively associated with speech self-control (β = 0.34) and flexibility of professional speech behaviour (β = 0.37).

The authors emphasized that these findings provide preliminary empirical support for a practice-oriented adaptation of the course, but they come with important qualifications. Because the study used a single-group pre-test–post-test design without a separate control group, the observed changes should be interpreted as pre-test–post-test differences associated with course participation rather than evidence of a causal intervention effect. The sample consisted of pre-service Kazakh language and literature teachers at two universities in southern Kazakhstan, so the results should not be generalized automatically to all teacher education programmes or institutions in the country. Some indicators were also based on student self-report, which may be influenced by self-perception and social desirability, and the assessment was conducted directly in the context of course development, so delayed measurements are needed to determine whether the changes persist.

The researchers proposed a three-level logic for further improving the Teacher’s Speech Culture course: first forming the normative and linguistic basis of professional speech, second applying that knowledge in the analysis and solution of professional communication tasks, and third regulating and flexibly adapting one’s own speech behaviour during interaction. They noted that the unexplained variance in their model suggests other factors, including previous communication experience, the breadth of language resources, reflective ability and direct interaction experience, are likely to matter as well. Future work, they concluded, should test the adapted course with comparison groups, broader samples and longer-term follow-up to evaluate its effectiveness and generalizability.

Subject of Research: Preliminary adaptation and pre-test–post-test evaluation of a practice-oriented Teacher's Speech Culture course for pre-service Kazakh language teachers in southern Kazakhstan.

Article Title: Preliminary adaptation and evaluation of the “Teacher's speech culture” course for pre-service Kazakh language teachers

Article References: Tazabek, A., Dauletbekova, Z., Shoibekova, A., Utegenova, G., & Abdukarimova, G. (2026). Preliminary adaptation and evaluation of the “Teacher's speech culture” course for pre-service Kazakh language teachers. Frontiers in Education, 11, 1968265. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2026.1968265

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/feduc.2026.1968265

Keywords: teacher education, professional speech competence, Kazakh language, course adaptation, pre-service teachers, pedagogical communication, communicative competence, pre-test–post-test design, path analysis, speech culture, Kazakhstan, language teacher training