There is awareness and concern in Japan that the process of teaching and learning English as a foreign language in the school system does not produce students who can communicate in the target language. This is especially true of communication in the spoken mode. Attempts have been made to move towards more communicative language teaching, despite constraints such as large class size, compulsory use of structurally-organized textbooks, and grammar-based university entrance examinations. However, such attempts do not seem to have been particularly successful. The purpose of this study is to suggest modifications to the teaching of English in upper secondary schools in Japan which could enable students to develop their communicative competence and also to consider implications for the assessment of spoken communication. Chapter I describes the scope and background of the study. Chapter II looks at the teaching of English in upper secondary schools in Japan, discussing aspects such as the place of English in the total school curriculum and constraints on the introduction of spoken communicative activities. Chapter III discusses the theory and practice of the Communicative Approach to Language Teaching in the English teaching context in Japan. Chapter IV offers suggestions for incorporating spoken communication in English lessons at upper secondary school level. In Chapter V, the problem of assessing oral communicative performance is considered in practical terms. The final chapter highlights major constraints and points to recent developments which may give an impetus to a move towards more communicative teaching of English as a foreign language in Japanese schools. It is intended that this Study Report will provide guidelines for the feasible introduction of spoken communicative activities in large classes at upper secondary level and that it will offer practical suggestions for assessing students' performance in such activities.

The diploma thesis deals with specific features of spoken communication in videos of so-called YouTubers that are available on the website YouTube. The aim of the presented diploma thesis is to show the state of the Czech YouTube production from the point of view of language. The theoretical part of the thesis deals with differentiation of national language and especially with slang. The empirical part consists of a short dictionary that shows the main principles of YouTube videos. In the following text different kinds of these videos are introduced and then three categories are analyzed in details: spoken form, slang terms, and language means. The diploma thesis is supported with a wide range of examples.

Spoken communication is only one of many types of human interaction with the environment. The aim of this thesis is to propose a theory of spoken communication based on basic principles of cognition, which govern all our behaviour. To this end, two established theoretical positions are integrated: 1) the skilled intentionality framework (an enactive view of cognition) and 2) a discriminative approach to human communication. According to the resulting theory, communication is a skilful shaping of an interlocutor's envi- ronment which serves to fulfil the agent's positively biased expectations about her own situation. Language is presented as an assemblage of sociomaterial regularities that make this skilful behaviour possible. The suggested perspec- tive is radically action-oriented, in contrast with traditional representational, content-based approaches. The proposed view is then applied to two specific phenomena widely studied within speech sciences (namely categoricality of speech and turn taking) and is confronted with selected empirical findings. Possibilities of empirical testing of the suggested theory are discussed.