DEVELOPING PRE-SERVICE EFL TEACHERS’ SPEAKING AND CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS WITH E-CASES
DEVELOPING PRE-SERVICE EFL TEACHERS’ SPEAKING AND CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS WITH E-CASES

Summary/Abstract: The article considers the theoretical background of electronic case (e-case) based instruction in the context of developing pre-service EFL teachers' speaking skills and critical thinking competencies and proposes a framework for the methodological application of the e-case typology in pre-service teacher education. The study draws on the classification of e-cases proposed by Podosynnikova and Homolia (45–47), which distinguishes three types of e-cases based on the extent of student engagement in solving the case, and examines each in terms of its structure, critical thinking components, and alignment with the four-level hierarchy of dialogical speaking skills formation proposed by Nikolaeva (315). To assess the readiness and attitudes of EFL teaching professionals, a questionnaire-based survey was conducted with 36 practising teachers and 27 pre-service English teachers at Ukrainian pedagogical universities. The findings indicate strong attitudinal support for critical-thinking-integrated oral tasks across both groups, alongside structural barriers that impede their systematic implementation. Drawing on the theoretical and empirical findings, the article presents one fully worked interactive e-case of the solution-generation type, developed as a classroom-synchronous web application for pre-service EFL teacher education.

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