Lexical approach. Educational games in English lessons as one of the means of expanding the lexical and grammatical capabilities of students when summarizing the studied material. If the definite article is used in the emphatic function for displacement

Annotation.

The object of research in the article is early learning of a foreign language as a linguodidactic phenomenon. The subject of the study is the formation of grammatical skills in children. In the article, the author shows the relevance of both the problem of early teaching a foreign language in general and teaching grammar. Issues related to the formation of grammatical skills in children seem doubly relevant in view of the objective unpreparedness of children to perceive grammatical rules and phenomena in their pure form. Particular attention is paid to the problems of the content of the grammatical minimum during early teaching of English, both from the point of view of rules and exceptions to them. The research method in the article is linguistic and pedagogical analysis, as well as empirical data obtained by the author as a result of teaching English to children. The author's main conclusions are as follows. Due to the specificity of grammatical phenomena (logicality, abstractness), children whose thinking is visual and figurative cannot assimilate it in explicit form. The inability of children to perceive grammar in its pure form does not mean that it is advisable to refuse to develop their grammatical skills. This skill involves not only using words according to the rules, but also using exceptions to them. Exceptions constitute an essential part of the basic grammatical minimum and present difficulties in work. The novelty of the article lies in the fact that grammatical material in early English teaching is considered in the context of a very broad related issue, in particular the problem of the appropriateness of early language teaching in general, the place of grammar in teaching in the context of modern linguodidactic concepts, problems of forming educational content taking into account age-related characteristics, as well as the specifics of grammatical material and the difficulties of its inclusion in the content of programs for children.

10.7256/2409-8698.2014.4.14942

Date sent to the editor:

06-04-2015

Keywords:

Preschool age, grammar minimum, exception, rule, grammar, early learning, English, children, primary school, grammar mistakes

Over the course of approximately a century of the existence of linguodidactics and methods of teaching foreign languages ​​as applied scientific disciplines, with the help of research conducted within their framework, many issues have been resolved that have made it possible today to have at our disposal a fairly large selection of methods and approaches to teaching foreign languages. At the same time, many issues are controversial, and new ideas in this area sometimes give rise to even more controversy about the advisability of their implementation to achieve results.

Is it necessary to purposefully teach grammar, is it worth abandoning the native language in class, at what age is it best to learn a foreign language, what principles should be used to form lexical and grammatical minimums, is it worth teaching pronunciation that is as close as possible to the authentic one or “not interfering” with students speaking with an accent , whether to correct students’ speech errors in the classroom or not to do this, just as it happens in their native language - this is just a small list of issues on which researchers, methodologists and practicing teachers have divided opinions.

At the same time, it is not difficult to guess that all these issues are key to the formation of both linguistic and communicative knowledge, skills and abilities. How is it that in the theory and practice of teaching a foreign language it is not possible to reach a consensus on key issues?

The fact is that, unlike, say, mathematics, swimming, playing a musical instrument, driving a car and many other areas of activity, where we can accurately talk about a skill if a person knows how to perform a certain set (even a very large one) of actions, the interpretation The concept of “knowledge of a foreign language” is very ambiguous. Proficiency in a foreign language consists of a whole complex of skills (grammatical, lexical, phonetic, speaking, reading, writing, listening), which, being interconnected, are extremely rarely developed in a person to the same and especially to the same high degree. That is why the same person can know a language very well or very poorly, depending on what the situation in which he must use the language and the scope of his activity as a whole requires.

However, not only issues related directly to the methodology of developing certain skills are relevant in the field of teaching a foreign language in our time. Organizational issues are essential for achieving learning results, and the most global of them is when is the best time to start teaching a person a foreign language. This question is very often asked to practicing teachers by parents of almost infants, who dream that their child will be fluent in a foreign language, which is so necessary in our time both for a future career and for personal development in the era of intercultural communication. In general, the practice of working with children and students shows that there is no direct relationship between the age at which they begin learning a foreign language and success in this process. There are many examples where a person learned a language from an early age at school, in courses, with a tutor, and at a university, but did not learn anything special. On the other hand, there are cases when people who began to learn a foreign language as adults achieved success, and quite quickly, primarily due to motivation determined by the specific goals of learning the language.

Most researchers believe that it is best start learning a foreign language at the age of five to eight, when the child has already mastered the system of his native language quite well, and he treats the new language consciously. It is at this age that there are still few cliches of speech behavior, it is easy to “encode” your thoughts in a new way, and there are no great difficulties when making contact in a foreign language. If the methodological system is constructed quite competently from a linguodidactic and psycholinguistic point of view, then success in mastering the limited language material offered and creating the necessary prerequisites for the further acquisition of any foreign language is ensured for almost all children.

On the other hand, success in mastering a foreign language is influenced by many factors, age is only one of them. Meanwhile, it is obvious that studying a foreign language from an early age is at least useful for the development of a child, since a foreign language as an academic discipline has enormous potential for the development of both cognitive processes and the personality as a whole. Even in times of crisis, the demand for the services of foreign language teachers specializing in working with young children remains at a fairly decent level. The fact is that at an older age it is quite easy to determine from the outside whether a teenager or student has a good chance of mastering a non-native language. This can be judged by his abilities, motivation, and experience in learning the language. In this sense, a small child is a “tabula rasa”, where abilities are yet to be discovered. Many parents hope that their son or daughter will show as many abilities as possible, including language abilities, so they are ready to create the best conditions for their development, including investing money in it.

All this leads us to say that early teaching of a foreign language is not just a linguodidactic problem, but a separate area in the theory of teaching a foreign language, a kind of “method within a method” with its own patterns, determined primarily by the age characteristics of young children.

In the context of marketing in the market of paid educational services, the problem of teaching grammar becomes particularly relevant. It has always been relevant, since grammar is one of the most important aspects of any language, its structure. However, with the spread of the idea of ​​client-centeredness in education, the issues of teaching grammar arise especially acutely, and in this case this applies not only to young children, but also to students of all ages, including very adult students.

The essence of the problem is that people don’t like to study grammar. Many people, when asked by a private teacher: “How would you like to learn a foreign language?”, answer: “Just not like at school and at college.” This means without learning the rules, but with the maximum amount of real language practice. A client-oriented approach to education implies, on the one hand, the satisfaction of the student and parent (client) with the learning process, and on the other, the provision of the highest quality educational services, that is, the result. Considering that the client pays for educational services here and now, with this approach the first usually outweighs the second, and the pleasure of the foreign language learner is put at the forefront. This is especially true for young children, whose stories to their parents about foreign language classes are based on emotions, and not on a critical understanding of the teacher’s work. Very often this forces teachers to abandon grammar altogether, so that the lesson, God forbid, does not seem boring to the child, and the parent is satisfied and does not take him to someone who provides educational services in the most entertaining and entertaining form.

On the other hand, it is quite obvious that it is impossible to speak a foreign language well without knowing grammar. Even conversational structures, being elementary, are grammatical structures that obey certain laws. Very often you can hear an argument against studying grammar: “It’s enough just to name the words without connecting them at all, and a foreigner will understand what you want.” The practical experience of people who communicate with representatives of other countries while traveling abroad confirms this thesis. However, in this way it is possible to communicate only at a conversational level on everyday topics. In a speech where there is a description, reasoning, where arguments are given to convince or dissuade the interlocutor, there will certainly be complex grammatical structures, the violation of which can lead to a violation of the logic of the statement and, accordingly, misunderstanding.

In modern conditions, a pedagogical contradiction appears between the importance of grammatical skills and a certain antipathy to the study of grammar on the part of people who want to master the language “for themselves,” which primarily means for practical purposes. It must be said that even those who consider the study of grammar boring and unacceptable in our time recognize the importance of grammatical skills, but it is believed that it can be achieved without studying grammar at all, but only on the basis of language practice.

The issues of early teaching of grammar are doubly relevant. The fact is that, in view of the psychophysiological age characteristics of children, all linguistic phenomena, including grammatical ones, should be presented to them only in an accessible form. The visual-figurative thinking of children, as well as the peculiarities of their motivation, force methodologists and practicing teachers to use the maximum amount of visual and playful forms of activity. There is a fairly wide range of them for working with vocabulary, but grammatical phenomena are abstract and difficult to convey directly in any form other than logical.

That is why grammatical skills are formed indirectly, through work mainly on vocabulary and phonetics, which is very difficult methodologically. Thus, to work on grammar in early learning, the so-called implicit approach is used, which implies a refusal to explain the rules as such. The question of the content of grammatical material, of course, depends on how exactly we interpret the concept of early learning.

In schools, a foreign language begins to be studied, as a rule, in the second grade. At this age, children already have at least a slight understanding of some grammatical phenomena of their native language, the basics of grammar of which are studied in primary school. This knowledge makes it easier to work on grammar, since the teacher can at least operate with elementary grammatical terminology (noun, verb, gender, number, etc.).

Recently, it has become fashionable to send children of preschool age, and even junior preschoolers, to private teachers, to clubs, sections, courses, to language centers, where there are special programs for teaching preschoolers, which are in good demand, as noted above. These children have visual-effective thinking; in addition, they are not yet familiar with the grammatical phenomena of even their native language, although they already speak it well. This makes even mentioning grammar impossible in principle. On the other hand, even when constructing elementary phrases, which even the smallest children are quite capable of, grammar is used, and grammatical skills begin to form to one degree or another.

Very often, parents, sending young children (both preschool and school age) to study a foreign language, demand from the teacher that he only speak to them, believing that in this way the child will master a foreign language like his native one and will think in a non-native language, as a result why he won’t need grammar at all, just as we speak Russian without remembering the rules at all.

This is the so-called natural method of teaching a foreign language, which has its origins in antiquity. Perhaps this is the only possible truly effective way to master a non-native language without any grammar at all.

This is the most ancient method of teaching a foreign language. From the point of view of organizing the process, it is no different from a child mastering his native language. A person is immersed in the linguistic environment and, through repeated perception of repeated words and phrases and correlating them with the situation in which he is, remembers them. It is quite difficult to talk about the correspondence of this situation with the situation of a child mastering his native language, since the mental mechanisms and processes through which a person masters his native language have not yet been fully studied. In view of this, we do not know how different they are between an infant and a child who already speaks their native language. In addition, it is obvious that a person immersed in a different language environment will still use his native language as a mental support, while the infant has nothing to use. A foreign language is mastered in this way by imitation of ready-made models, by repeated repetition and reproduction of new material by analogy with the already familiar. It should be noted that the techniques of repeating patterns have spread to other methods and are still used in the methodology. Methodological value of authentic materials, speech of native speakers, etc. also go back to the natural method, although now they are talked about more in the context of the communicative method.

The natural method was pursued exclusively for practical purposes; its peculiarity is that it is possible to teach language without theory and rules. This is very valuable these days, firstly, because the rhythm of modern life dictates the need to learn languages ​​with the maximum amount of practice, bypassing explanations of the rules and “getting straight to the point.” Secondly, today many teachers have to work with multinational groups whose students do not speak each other’s languages, and sometimes even the teacher’s language. It is objectively impossible to explain any rules in this situation. The traditions of teaching using the natural method were widespread in our country until the beginning of the 20th century, when a child spent his childhood with a governess, from whose lips foreign language was constantly heard. Of course, this applied only to upper-class families and not to the masses, but in the ancient world, knowledge of a foreign language was also available only to privileged people. However, even in modern conditions, not everyone has the opportunity to completely immerse themselves in a foreign language environment (for example, live abroad for a long time).

The main feature of this method is that grammar, as in the native language, only generalizes and leads to awareness of what has already been mastered from practice. Thus, she is relegated to the background.

In the context of modern views and ideas, the idea of ​​practical orientation in language teaching is especially valuable. However, in modern pedagogical practice, the natural method is perceived somewhat simplistically, when it is believed that the teacher is required to simply speak a foreign language, without thinking about the methodological side of the issue at all.

Finally, this method implies untranslated semantization, that is, the connection of a foreign word with a concept not through the native language, but in the same way as it happens in the native language. Thus, the use of the native language in teaching is excluded. In addition, any translations from foreign to native and vice versa are prohibited.

Meanwhile, the natural method can only be effective if a person is in a foreign language environment for a sufficiently long time or enters it very often and systematically. The idea of ​​refusing to use the native language in foreign language classes is motivated precisely by the effectiveness of this method. However, if students study for thirty to forty minutes, or even more so for fifteen to twenty, if we are talking about preschoolers, all the advantages of immersion in a foreign language environment are offset by the very short duration of the lesson, and the disadvantages of abandoning their native language, on the contrary, are very clearly visible.

Thus, except for those cases when, from an early age, parents or a nanny speak a foreign language to the child at home, or when the child is very often taken abroad, children learn foreign languages ​​to a greater or lesser extent in an academic form.

In the methodology of teaching foreign languages, the problem of grammatical material in the context of early learning a foreign language comes down to the following questions.

2) How and in what form should children be given grammatical rules?

3) Is it necessary to work with exceptions to the rules and if so, how?

4) Was it worth correcting the grammatical errors?

In this article we will look at early teaching of grammar using the example of the English language, since this language is today the leading means of intercultural communication, most often acts as a lingua franca and is the most studied foreign language in the world; our country is no exception in this sense.

English grammar has certain features that must be taken into account during early language learning: it is much easier than Russian, but at the same time it is completely different from Russian. In English, it is not enough to use the correct words in the correct form; unlike Russian, they must also be used in the correct order, which automatically increases the number of errors in students’ speech.

That is why the issue of the content of early grammar teaching is especially acute, and we are talking specifically about the grammatical minimum. This term itself suggests that in no case should emphasis be placed on grammar, but it is necessary, in the most accessible form, to give children a certain set of rules that will allow them to construct simple sentences when communicating on everyday topics. The spread of liberalism and creativity in education has led to the exaggeration of this idea, which is interpreted in such a way that children do not need to be taught grammar at all, just as their mistakes should not be corrected, let them speak, communicate and enjoy communication, even if they speak incorrectly, only would say. Meanwhile, when teaching a foreign language, this is a very dangerous path, since the habit of speaking without completely thinking about the correct construction of sentences is very difficult to eradicate in the future, and the experience of working with teenagers shows this very well.

When working with adult students, it often happens that a student speaks confidently, but makes hardly more mistakes in a sentence than there are words in it. Moreover, when you point out mistakes, he corrects them immediately. This suggests that the student knows how to say it correctly, but speaks with errors due to the lack of the habit of thinking about the correctness of speech. This is an argument in favor of the fact that grammatical skills need to be developed from childhood.

The main difficulty in selecting the content of teaching grammar at any stage lies in the narrowness and limitation of the grammatical material, as well as in its clear structure and systematization.

For example, it would be quite easy to practice the Present Continuous tense with children, asking them to demonstrate the actions that they are performing at the moment (I run, I jump, we swim, we fly, etc.), however, it rests on the verb to be, which is an exception in form, is also used differently from the Russian language, where the word “is” is omitted. This significantly complicates the development of this design.

The ways of expressing the past tense in Russian (Past Simple, Present Perfect) rest on irregular English verbs. The particularity of modal verbs is the construction “I can”, which is often used in speech and easily played out in communicative situations.

You can select lexical material based on the age characteristics of the students. For example, in the content of any course for children, one of the main topics is always animals and toys. For adults, of course, this is inappropriate, so entry-level programs for adults include only the names of familiar pets “cat” and “dog”, which relate to the theme “family”.

It is, of course, impossible to select grammatical phenomena in this way. Indeed, it would be very strange to say that some rule is more interesting for children than another, if we can talk about interest in rules in general. Basic grammar is the same for both a preschooler and a successful businessman starting to learn business English from scratch.

Even more difficult are exceptions to the rules. In this case, we should talk about two types of exceptions. The first are the actual exceptions, and the second are those grammatical phenomena that can fit into the rules, but these rules are not explained to children at the stage of primary education. That is why the phenomenon is actually an exception. For example, if a child knows how to say “I want to...” or I like to...” (do something) (I want to... I like to...), then the phrase “I can...” (I can..) is actually an exception. , if you don’t go into details of modal verbs, after which, as a rule, the pre-infinitive particle is not used. It should be noted that teachers call younger schoolchildren who already have certain grammatical ideas about their native language the term “modal verb.” Meanwhile, this term in itself does not tell them anything at all. Moreover: not every adult student of a non-linguistic profile can immediately answer the question of how modal verbs differ from non-modal verbs. It seems that children should be told in this case that there are some verbs (or even just words) after which to is not used and can is one of them.

If we talk about exceptions themselves, there is an opinion that during early teaching they should be avoided and students should not be given language situations in which they are present. For example, it is very easy to explain the plural of English nouns without the finger rule. It is enough to simply name the pairs of words book - books, cat - cats, table - tables. Of course, this must be accompanied by a demonstration of some kind of clarity. The problem is that in English the exceptions are the most commonly used words, so following this principle is quite difficult, otherwise you will have to do without nouns such as “man, woman, child,” which is only possible at the very beginning. If we talk about verbs, then almost half of those that denote everyday actions are irregular.

Sometimes they jokingly say that there are so many exceptions in English that it is easier not to study the rules at all, but simply to memorize each construction separately, since learning the rules, and then all the exceptions to them, is even more difficult. This statement seems like sophistry, but in the context of early English learning it has a reasonable kernel. When the volume of lexical units is still small, it is quite possible to give children regular and irregular forms mixed up, and then pay attention to those that are used most often and thus inductively derive a rule based on the available material. It has already been noted that children do not have logical thinking, however, its development is one of the most important tasks of primary school, and this development should be carried out through all subjects, including a foreign language.

In this case, the rule will not be explained, but will be derived based on existing knowledge about how to say it correctly. Children also learn that there are exceptions in the Russian language in Russian lessons, when they already know how to speak Russian, and they used both regular and irregular forms correctly, without having the slightest idea about the rule.

The objectives of this work do not include the analysis of specific teaching aids for children, however, it can be noted that in general, grammatical phenomena as such, at best, begin to be mentioned only in the second or third school year. Meanwhile, grammar is still being learned, since even the simplest English phrases, which even preschool children can easily master, contain grammatical phenomena atypical for Russian. For example, the sentences I have a cat, I have a dog, etc. contain an article, as well as the verb “to have”, which is used instead of the Russian phrase “I have”. Sentences like It is a dog, It is a cat contain the same article and the verb “to be,” which is not omitted in the present tense, unlike in Russian.

The main principle of the formation of the English grammatical minimum for early learning in the books of many domestic authors is the maximum possible correspondence of foreign grammatical phenomena to Russian ones, at least at the initial stage. The systems of verb tenses have the greatest discrepancy in Russian and English grammar, which is why during early learning all communicative situations are built on the present tense for as long as possible.

As already mentioned, children, due to their age characteristics, cannot perceive material without clarity. Grammatical phenomena are not as figurative as lexical ones, but there are still certain ways to make grammar visual. Cubes, trailers, bricks, etc. with words drawn on them that need to be folded or placed in the correct order, they serve as a construction set that develops children's thinking.

Correcting grammatical errors is also one of the most controversial issues in linguodidactics in general. There is no consensus among methodologists regarding how to correct students’ mistakes and whether it is worth doing at all.

The following approaches are generally accepted.

1) Do not correct errors at all if they do not interfere with understanding the meaning of what was said.

2) Let the student speak and then correct his mistakes.

3) Interrupt the student, correcting his mistakes each time or asking him to correct them himself.

Unlike lexical errors, grammatical errors rarely interfere with understanding the meaning of a statement. That is why in the context of communicative teaching, so often practiced today, in which the content of an utterance is more valuable than its formal correctness, the first approach is often used. This creates naturalness in communicating in a foreign language, just as when speaking our native language, we do not correct each other’s mistakes, otherwise it sounds like nitpicking.

This approach has certain advantages, but with early learning it is completely unacceptable. Children tend to quickly and very firmly memorize foreign language phenomena, so it will be difficult to retrain the child later.

The second approach is difficult because, having finished speaking, the student may already forget how he expressed this or that thought at the beginning of the monologue.

The main disadvantage of the third approach is that the communicative integrity of the lesson is violated, since by correcting mistakes along the way, the student may lose his train of thought, and in addition, he will constantly think not about what to say, but about how to make a mistake. However, during early language learning, when monologues, as a rule, consist of a maximum of a few simple sentences, this approach is usually used.

The article noted that school-age children, unlike preschoolers, can already perceive the simplest grammatical terminology. However, this only slightly facilitates the process of forming grammatical skills, since they still cannot fully operate with it. It is no easier to teach grammar to a second grader than to teach a five-year-old child. Another thing is that if school-age children can concentrate for about thirty minutes, provided that the activity is interesting to them, then with preschoolers you can effectively study for only fifteen minutes. The lion's share of time during early learning of English is spent on developing lexical and pronunciation skills. Meanwhile, the grammatical skill should not lag far behind the others. The problem here also lies in the fact that at an early stage this may not be very noticeable, but later it will certainly slow down the student’s progress in learning English. The grammar of a language is its framework; let’s not forget that for a long time the concepts of “knowledge of a language” and “knowledge of grammar” were almost identical. With the spread of ideas of intercultural communication, creativity, liberality, and focus on natural communication in teaching English, the “boring” rules found themselves relegated to the background or even the third place. On the other hand, there is no doubt that with unformed grammatical skills, a person’s speech will be, at best, funny, and at worst, incomprehensible.

Is it possible to get rid of grammar and long tedious explanations? How to learn irregular verbs without lists and cramming? Increase your vocabulary without much effort and at the same time increase your knowledge? Yes, yes, it seems that the magic pill is the lexical approach.

Today I will show you how you can use the lexical approach in learning a language. How to work with vocabulary in an English lesson - and move from studying individual words to phrases.

How to diversify the study of grammar - so much so that students will not even notice that they are studying grammar)) And how to learn irregular verbs on the quiet.

The first to propose the Lexical Approach was the well-known comrade Michael Lewis. And although materiel is very important, in this post I will not write about theoretical calculations. And I will show how the lexical approach works in practice and already at the earliest levels ( and ).

Lexical approach and irregular verbs

I’ll take irregular verbs in the past tense as an example and show how the lexical approach can be used here.

Third, let’s see what kind of life the phrases live))

What met, for example, you can not only people(who), and and where ( in a cafe) and for what ( for a coffee).

What lost- it’s not just about losing something literally, something tangible ( lost my car keys), but also more abstract things ( lost his job, lost interest). This helps you begin to see vocabulary more globally and use it in new contexts.

Fourth, create associations:

Fifthly, we practice the pronunciation of PHRASES - stress, coherence, tempo, loss of sounds, if relevant. These are, of course, advanced levels. The lexical approach does not insist on this. But common sense insists on this)) Why not practice good pronunciation now?

And sixthly, let's have fun - we drive these phrases back and forth. With hints, without hints, in order and out of order, we make up stories and anything else we can think of:

Writing stories:

Download phrases with irregular verbs and pictures for training:

And you know, the lexical approach gives excellent results. In the following lessons, students suddenly begin to spontaneously and appropriately use these phrases in English.

Moreover, having understood the principle, they combine words and create new phrases in the same image and likeness - and again they are in place and use them correctly!

I naturally regret that I didn’t start purposefully using the lexical approach earlier. Because there are a huge number of advantages.

What is good about the lexical approach?

Fluency

Knowing stable phrases and phrases (collocations, lexical chunks) increases speech fluency - when you don’t have to hang around during a conversation and think about what to combine with what. There are already prepared, correct and typical phrases.

New phrases

The lexical approach gives a principle, and understanding the principle helps to create new phrases by simply replacing some words in the matrix:

Without cramming and tedious explanations

The lexical approach and knowledge of lexical chunks practically frees you from grammar. And the naked eye can see that any phrases are half grammar.

What is remembered in our particular case (phrases with irregular verbs)?

Since we train phrases right away in the Past Simple, irregular verbs are memorized without cramming from a list.

Repeated many, many times, expressions like felt stressed, felt embarrassed, felt tired are remembered without the omnipresent felt myself. And without long explanations about what feel is used without myself. Without any theoretical explanation at all))

didn't know what to do
taught me to drive

Such phrases (with an infinitive) are also remembered immediately and easily without tedious explanations of when an infinitive is needed and when it is not needed. And then, at higher levels, when we get to the difference between the infinitive and the gerund, all this will already be very familiar. And not in theory, but intuitively, in practice. And you may not even have to use the scary words “infinitive” and “gerund”)))

Also, without long theoretical calculations, the correct prepositions are remembered:

at the beach
at home
in the office

And these are not all the advantages of such work; the lexical approach definitely rules!))

The only downside, however, is that unless your textbook focuses on vocabulary in this way, you, the teacher, will have to do it all. But there are very few textbooks that take the lexical approach as a basis and they are not so popular.

There are no disadvantages for students))

Colleagues, do you use a lexical approach? Does your textbook pay attention to lexical chunks?

Students, do you think this kind of work is useful?

Leave a comment and let's discuss!

1.5 Formation of lexical and grammatical skills

When studying a foreign language, it is necessary to launch the mechanism of stereotypy on the basis of the selected grammatical minimum, that is, to create an intuitive grammar that would facilitate the organization of speech in a foreign language.

At the same time, one must keep in mind the following significant differences in the conditions of mastering one’s native and foreign languages, which affect the approach to teaching the grammar of a foreign language.

1) The native language is the primary vital means of communication, the acquisition of which is naturally motivated, because the native language is acquired in childhood in parallel with the child’s adaptation to the environment. A foreign language is a secondary means of communication, the use of which is not dictated by vital necessity; mastering a foreign language begins at school age, when the main means of communication - the native language - has already been established; therefore, special efforts are required to induce motivation to learn a foreign language.

2) The native language is mastered in a natural and abundant language environment, from which the child without special effort, i.e. involuntarily and in a short time, identifies patterns. The acquisition of a foreign language occurs in educational conditions in an environment alien to it. There is no sufficient basis for involuntary identification of patterns. Therefore, when mastering grammar in a school course of a foreign language, special attention should be paid to theory and its optimal combination with speech practice, as well as the relationship between the voluntary and involuntary forms of attention, i.e., the consistent implementation of the principle of consciousness.

The role of this principle in mastering grammar is especially great. This is determined by the generalizing properties of grammar, the patterns of which extend to entire series of words, due to which it introduces many homogeneous units into the speech experience of students at once, which shortens the path to language mastery.

The number of grammatical patterns in each language is different, but in all languages ​​it is visible, and, therefore, it is not difficult to master them, since human memory stores generalized phenomena better than individual ones.

The principle of consciousness underlies all methods used in mastering grammar; Within each method, its own relationship between theory and practice is established. It is only important to keep in mind the following: the use of “pure” theory without its confirmation by specific facts of the functioning of a grammatical phenomenon, as well as “pure” practice without its comprehension, are not accepted when mastering grammar in a school course of a foreign language.

Any word introduced must, firstly, be communicatively significant for the child; secondly, to enter into semantic and grammatical connections with other words. As E.I. Negnevitskaya states, “immediately after the introduction of a word, a transition to action with it is necessary,” while “speech action means constructing a statement.” The construction of a statement lies already in the field of grammar. Consequently, mastering lexical material in isolation from grammar is impossible.

Associative connections play a huge role in the introduction of lexical units, therefore, when presenting new vocabulary “... it is necessary to give not words isolated in meaning, scattered in the text, not words in a rhyme or song, but to immediately acquaint the student with a group of words denoting some piece of reality ...”, as well as “... a pair of words connected by a proven association (enemy - friend, table - chair, etc.) is remembered much better than a pair of unrelated words, and, what is very important, better than the same words data in isolation."

I. L. Sholpo offers some rules that should be followed when introducing new vocabulary:

1) You should not enter more than 10 words at once.

2) Among the entered words there must be several pairs connected by a stable associative connection.

The introduction of vocabulary of this particular semantic group should be motivated and caused by the communicative needs of children. If a semantic group includes words of the same part of speech, their study should be associated with the repetition of words of another group belonging to a different part of speech, so that it is possible to compose combinations subject - subject, subject - sign, subject - action. It is necessary to think over the order of mastering words within a group: some words become reference words, others “catch on” to them associatively.

You cannot ask children to “learn words.” New vocabulary should be established in the child’s mind gradually, through a thoughtful step-by-step system of exercises (Appendix 6).

Thus, when selecting texts for a lesson, it is necessary to take into account children’s love for onomatopoeic and sound-depicting words and, based on this property of age, instill in children a taste for a foreign language and introduce them to its atmosphere.

To successfully master lexical material you must:

a) familiarizing children not with isolated words, but with groups of words connected by semantic or phonetic association;

b) formation of a motive for becoming familiar with the words of a given semantic group;

c) internalization of vocabulary through a system of games, rather than mechanical memorization of words from a list;

d) the inclusion of new words into the system of relations that have already developed between words and their groups known to children;

e) coordinated familiarity with lexical material and those grammatical operations that allow it to be introduced into speech activity.

When selecting lexical material, it is necessary to take into account: its communicative significance for children, objective complexity.

When teaching preschoolers, you need to pay great attention to the use of visual and illustrative material, however, when it comes to organizing role-playing games, imitating actions when performing commands or illustrating poems and songs, it is better that the objects are imaginary.

In the living act of speech, lexical and grammatical are inseparable: grammar organizes the dictionary, as a result of which units of meaning are formed - the basis of all speech activity; when teaching language, these aspects are organically connected. It is important to pay tribute to the specificity of each aspect, to identify and use its special contribution to a holistic communicative-oriented learning system. The role of vocabulary in mastering a foreign language is no less significant than grammar. It is vocabulary that conveys the immediate subject of thought due to its nominative function; therefore, it penetrates into all spheres of life, helping to reflect not only real reality, but also imaginary reality. This idea is accurately expressed by N.I. Zhinkin: “Words are the names of things, phenomena, events, the names of everything that exists and can exist in reality... If the name is not clear to the listener, it is empty - there is no such object. Any thing, even imaginary, no matter what area of ​​sensory it belongs to, can become noticeable if it has a name.”

Any coherent text contains thematic vocabulary, the meaning of which is the key to understanding the meaning.

Mastery of the word is the most important prerequisite for speaking, but in reproductive types of speech activity, knowing only the meaning of the word is not enough; here, an equally important role is played by mastery of word connections and the formation of word combinations based on them.

To use words in reproductive types of speech activity it is necessary:

Find a word in memory, and therefore it must first be stored in memory;

Pronounce it, which presupposes mastery of its phonetic form;

Include in a combination, in a sentence, in a text.

For receptive types of speech activity you need:

Associate a graphic or appropriately sounding image of a word with its lexical meaning; in this case, analyzing the word by composition can help;

Determine the grammatical form of the word, connections with other words, which will lead to insight into the meaning.

It is necessary to teach the vocabulary side of speech activities in such a way that students constantly feel the tension of the communicative task, i.e., that they need words to express thoughts and recognize them. Only a clear speech perspective determines motivation and success in mastering the dictionary.

Working on expanding your vocabulary accompanies the entire learning process. Almost every second lesson involves introducing a new portion of words and working on assimilating them. Ensuring vocabulary mastery is the primary duty of every teacher. And students should be awakened to an interest in carefully working on words and constantly expanding their vocabulary. It is possible to develop special tests that would allow one to periodically determine the volume of an individual dictionary (thesaurus) and see one’s progress in filling the dictionary. Of course, the most convincing evidence of vocabulary knowledge in the eyes of teachers and students is the ability to participate in oral and reading communication.

The choice of semantization technique in each individual case is determined by the nature of the word, the stage of learning and the level of training of students. Preference is mainly given to monolingual methods of semantization, and translation is regarded only as a way out when monolingual methods fail.

The experience of introducing large arrays of words in dialogic texts in a foreign language with parallel translation into the native language in intensive courses has proven itself well. The authors of a number of teaching aids have come to the conclusion that if, during familiarization, we allow simultaneous translation and interpretation in the native language, these are the most economical and reliable methods of semantization, then it will be possible to quickly move on to training and practicing speech exclusively in a foreign language.

Students encounter a new word based on the text. The source text, intended for familiarization with the dictionary, can be told by the teacher, and students perceive it by ear; it may be contained in a textbook, and then students read it. In the first case, already while listening to the text, you can start working on the pronunciation of new words. To do this, the teacher should use a special sign to attract students to pronounce those parts of the text that contain new words. This technique (it is also used when familiarizing with grammatical material) increases the activity of perception. As a result, exercises in imitation begin already at the stage of familiarization with a new word: “language testing” of new words occurs at the moment of their presentation.

The volume of the text and its nature depend on the stage of learning. In some cases, it may be necessary to create multiple microtexts to cover all new words.

If students cannot determine the meaning of a word from the text, then they are offered a translation into their native language. Along with semantization, carried out with the help of the teacher, students should increasingly be encouraged to independently become familiar with the word. Students should be provided with rational methods of work: first they need to exhaust all the indicated possibilities of the text, use analysis of the word according to its composition, and if the meaning does not become clear, then turn to the dictionary.

Familiarization with words based on the text is completed by isolating them from the text. Any text, no matter how vividly it presents a word, introduces only its contextual meaning and one way of communication. To expand the range of information about a word, designed to construct “your own” texts, you need to extract the word from the text and consider it as an independent unit. The recommended approach is the same as when working on grammatical material: presenting the material as a coherent whole, then isolating it for close examination and practice.

Training students in mastering new words is carried out with the help of exercises that strengthen the semantics of new words and phrases formed on the basis of semantic compatibility. All lexical exercises are accordingly divided into two categories, aimed at: 1) memorizing the word, its semantics in unity with the pronunciation and grammatical form; 2) the formation of combinations of words of a semantic nature. (Appendix 5).

In connection with reading at the senior stage of simple original texts of different functional styles - popular science, socio-political and artistic - students must master a passive vocabulary, i.e. they must develop receptive lexical skills - recognize a word by some supports in its graph and based on syntactic form and synchronously related to meaning.

Students should be more encouraged to independently familiarize themselves with the vocabulary of the active minimum; this is relevant in connection with the passive vocabulary. Reading silently is an independent process that takes place in conditions when the reader is alone with the book. Familiarization with unfamiliar words should not change the essence of this process. Based on the form of the word in the text, the student identifies it and gives it a dictionary form. If a word does not have supporting elements, then the student looks up its meaning in the dictionary. At the same time, he selects one meaning from several if the word is ambiguous, checking himself against the text according to the feedback principle.

Next comes training under the guidance of a teacher. Its goal is to ensure the emergence of a skill, i.e., automatic recognition of a new word and its correlation with the meaning during further reading. All training exercises must be adequate to reading as a process and contribute to the development of some reading mechanism. In order for verbal stereotypes to arise and the auditory-sound-motor image of a word to be firmly imprinted, facilitating its automatic recognition when reading, these exercises are performed out loud, which does not change their receptive nature. To develop receptive vocabulary skills, the following types of exercises are used:

Loud reading and subsequent translation of a new word in various syntagmas and sentences. When performing this exercise, the meaning of this word is enriched.

Filling in the gaps in the text while reading. This exercise is aimed at developing forecasting ability.

Selection of words and phrases from the text based on semantic commonality. This exercise also aims to develop forecasting ability, as it produces a “thematic grid” that suggests a topic and reduces the measure of uncertainty. For example: künstlerisches Wirken, Bilder und Grafiken, Schaffen, Porträts, Präsident des Verbandes Bilder Künstler. These words suggest the content of the text: we are talking about the German artist Leigh Grundig.

Fill in the gaps with words of different meanings, the images of which students confuse. For example: liegen - legen, senden - senken, sehen - sehnen. This exercise trains attention.

All exercises in recognizing new words create the prerequisites for solving semantic problems when reading. They are built on a passive vocabulary minimum selected for reading, the careful development of which is just as mandatory as the development of an active vocabulary minimum.

In addition to these clearly limited “closed” vocabulary minimums, it is also important to develop students’ potential vocabulary. The potential vocabulary is “open” and individual in nature. It arises on the basis of students’ independent semantization of unstudied vocabulary at the time of reading. The volume of a potential vocabulary and the lexical skill developing on the basis of this volume is directly dependent on the degree of mastery of each student’s active and passive minimums.

The potential vocabulary is formed: on the basis of words consisting of familiar word-formation elements, and words whose meaning is inferred by conversion, using an understanding of international vocabulary. These points are the basis for deducing the meaning of unfamiliar words. Deducibility is understood as a psycholinguistic property of a word, “which provides the reader with the opportunity to routinely discover the meaning of an unfamiliar derivative (complex) word based on the meanings of its components.”

A prerequisite for deducibility is knowledge of the methods of word formation in a given language and the meaning of affixes, as well as knowledge of the ways of forming internationalisms in a given language.

There are different types of inferential exercises that influence the development of potential vocabulary. Define:

The meaning of derived words formed from known roots and with the help of known affixes;

The meaning of international words;

The meaning of unfamiliar compound words according to the composition of their components;

The meaning of unfamiliar words, starting from the known meaning; check it in context;

The meaning of unfamiliar words formed by conversion.

A special source of potential vocabulary is linguistic guesswork, a very important component of independent word semantization. The researchers derived three groups of language guessing clues: intralingual, interlingual, and extralingual.

An intralingual hint follows from assigning a word to a certain grammatical category and identifying its function in a sentence. Word-forming elements also play an important role.

Interlingual clues are contained in words formed as a result of borrowing from language to language, in internationalisms, Sovietisms, as well as in full and partial tracing papers, i.e. in words and phrases formed according to a general word-formation, syntactic and semantic model. Interlingual cueing comes from the coincidence of individual semantic parts of words.

Extra-linguistic clues arise from knowledge of the factors and phenomena of reality reflected in the text and giving it an indicative character.

A linguistic guess - all intuition is related to it - does not appear out of nowhere, it integrates life and linguistic experience.

Linguistic intuition is thus the result of all learning and life influences, and therefore it manifests itself differently in different students, that is, it is subjective. One student may see a clue in a given word or context, while another may not. However, special exercises in linguistic guesswork can make it more manageable and, therefore, objective.

Teaching a foreign language is based on strictly limited language material, hence the need for careful work on it, including checking the measure and quality of its assimilation, i.e. control.

Control of language knowledge is built on an arbitrary basis; it should be of a “tracking” nature, i.e., accompany the entire process of knowledge acquisition, without consuming much time. These can be written “flights” and oral control exercises, covering all students in a class (group) in a few minutes, as well as various forms of tests. At the same time, the basis of control is not isolated linguistic material, but elements of speech, particles of a coherent whole.

Control of phonetic skills can be carried out with the help of phonetic exercises, prerequisites for oral speech; Before dialogue, in particular, it makes sense to check the pronunciation of various types of interrogative sentences. At the same time, in the task for phonetic exercises, the teacher concentrates attention on the current difficulty: “Now let’s check how you pronounce interrogative sentences without a question word. Notice the rising tone in the phrase.”

It is also advisable to offer students as a control task associative tests that recall words and phrases of a certain subject area from memory. To do this, a “source” word(s) is proposed, and students select their own words, for example:

buy products …

buy clothes …

pay...

Control of language material should also be a prerequisite for receptive types of speech activity - reading and listening. Orienting students toward understanding when the language form is not yet clear often leads to an approximate understanding. At the same time, targeted control, which helps highlight the desired form, leads to accurate and correct understanding and has a positive effect on forecasting.

Analyze the exercises used in the formation of reading skills at the initial stage of learning. The object of my study is teaching English in primary schools. The subject is the study of the process of developing reading skills at the initial stage of teaching English. The work consists of an introduction, two chapters, a conclusion and a list of references. 1.1 The concept of...

... . (see Appendix) 2.1. Analysis of the study. The hypothesis of my research was that the use of an interactive approach in teaching foreign languages ​​effectively affects the level of speaking. After conducting observations, I identified 2 classes in which I will use interactive teaching methods, and in the remaining three parallels, I will use traditional teaching. And look at the result of knowledge...

Regularities for any audience and for different learning conditions. The results of the experimental section allow us to make certain recommendations regarding the organization of teaching listening at the initial stage (5th grade of a general education school and 3-4 grades of a school where a number of subjects are taught in foreign languages). In addition to the initial stage tasks listed above, which...