RESULTS OF THE EMPIRICAL STUDY ON THE PERCEPTION OF WARM-UP EXERCISES IN THE PROCESS OF TEACHING ENGLISH TO ENGINEERING STUDENTS

Abstract

Warm-up activities play an important role in communicative language teaching by helping learners activate prior knowledge, reduce speaking anxiety, and prepare for meaningful classroom communication. While previous research has confirmed their positive impact on learner motivation and engagement, relatively little is known about how engineering students perceive these activities in English language classrooms. This study investigated the attitudes of 30 engineering students at a Ukrainian technical university toward warm-up activities, focusing on learner engagement, preferred activity types and topics, perceived learning value, affective factors, and recommendations for classroom practice. Data were collected through an anonymous online questionnaire comprising multiple-choice and Likert-scale items. Responses to multiple-choice items were analysed using percentages, while Likert-scale responses were summarised using medians and interquartile ranges (IQRs), with percentages used to illustrate response distributions. The survey findings revealed that most students viewed warm-up activities positively, reporting that they enhanced engagement, facilitated the transition to an Englishspeaking mode, reduced speaking anxiety, and encouraged greater use of English during lessons. Results showed that discussion-based activities, games, and topics related to current events and everyday life were the most preferred warm-up activities. Respondents identified speaking practice and vocabulary development as the main learning benefits and recommended greater variety, increased interactivity, closer alignment with lesson objectives, and wider integration of multimedia resources. Overall, the findings suggest that systematically planned, contextually relevant warm-up activities may support communicative participation and learner readiness for effective English language learning