THE METHOD of teaching the foreign language is a purposeful system of teaching having a special design depending upon the approach within which the given method is.

THE GOAL OF EACH METHOD is forming and developing foreign lan­guage speech competence. It can be realized with the help of a certain kind of methodological techniques depending upon the approach the method is within.

Within one approach there can function many methods, e.g.:

l.The Translational Approach can be implemented by means of the Grammar-Translation Method, the Lexical-Translation Method and the Method of Conscious Translation.

2. The Communicative Approach can be carried out with the help of a great lot of methods, such as the Method of Communicative Language Teaching, The Method of Total Physical Response, the Silent Way Method, the Method of Community Language Learning, the Natural Approach Method etc.

In general, nowadays methodologists determine the wide-ranging classifi­cation of Foreign Language Teaching Approaches, the following list including the basic ones only: 1. Grammar-Translation Approach, 2. Direct Approach, 3.Reading Approach, 4.Audiolingual Approach (United States), 5. Pedagogic Functional Grammar Approach, 6.Oral-Situation Approach (Britain), 7.Cog­nitive Approach, 8.Affective-Humanistic Approach, 9.Comprehension-Based Approach, 10.Communicative Approach , ll.Integrative or Integrated Ap­proaches. [83; 2,302; 69,56; 45, 6;].

The dominating approach to teaching the foreign language since the second half of the 20-th century has been the Communicative Approach. According to it the leading role in teaching is to be given to teaching speech functions of

the language, i.e. natural assimilation of the foreign language through speech communicative activity. This approach states that it is possible to teach for­eign languages only by means of real-life communication. That's why in all the methods within the Communicative Approach there are used methodo­logical techniques and exercises activating real-life communication.

The methods derived from Communicative Approach are The Commu­nity Language Learning, The Method of Total Physical Response, the Silent Way, Suggestopedea and many others. One and the same idea, that of natural acquisition of a foreign language, underlies all these methods, however spe­cific techniques of each of them being different.

Integrated approaches in language teaching is a part of the Communi­cative Approach. They encourage developing in learners integrated skills in all four types of speech activity and in three language elements within the general framework of using language for learning as well as for communica­tion. Integrated skills should be interchangeably formed at one and the same language material. Content-based tasks can serve as an example of integrated approach. It assumes that language is best learned when it is used as a me­dium for learning something else, so students studying the English language can be suggested such courses as: How to keep to a healthy life style; How to improve communication skills etc. [1, 302; 38, 6; 47, 132].

In the twenty first century prominence in teaching foreign languages is going to be given to the integrated approaches.

Understanding of such methodological terms as "language habit" and "lan­guage skill" is very important for teachers.

When a person uses a language the following speech actions and opera­tions are performed in his/her mental codes: receiving information, selecting information, identifying information, forming grammatical forms, analyz­ing and further processing of linguistic information. At the level of the habit these actions and operations are rather rapid, but are not simultaneous. This is manifested in rather long pauses of hesitation, interjections and slow rate of speech. When we deal with the habit we see that language operations and actions are carried out automatically only to a certain degree. So, the habit is a rather automatic component of the process of producing and receiving language information by means of communication [2, 162].

The skill is a component of mental processing and producing language in­formation carried out in a highly automatic way. At the level of the skill the sound-motor image of the word, its sound-letter image and its meaning (or notion) are brought into correlation immediately. It results in no pauses of hesitation in speech and adding quick and normal tempo to it [2, 162]. The

functional difference between the habit and the skill can be better understood in the following example.

Suppose, a teacher has already trained his/her students in putting ques­tions. They have been trained for some class— hours. And now the students can role-play dialogues. The teacher notices that the habit of putting ques­tions has already been formed: in most cases the auxiliary verbs are used at their proper positions. Learners' minds are now rather rapid in their on-line operations of constructing interrogative utterances. Nevertheless, at the same time the teacher sees that reproducing the dialogue is somewhat unnatural: pauses of hesitation are frequent and long, the tempo and intonations are inadequate, the students are uncertain in choosing auxiliaries and so on. This means that their speech actions and operations with interrogative sentence are not at the level of the skill, they are at the level of the habit.

Hence, we can state that language habit and language skill function in in­separable connection. In a speech skill they are integrated in habits of differ­ent types, of different level of automaticity, fully automatic, partly automatic or non-automatic. It should be mentioned that nowadays in methodological literature abroad they don't use the term "habit" substituting it by the terms "sub-skills", "part skills", "micro-skills", etc. [18, 164].

By the language form or item we mean any language item which is to be either comprehended or memorized, explained, composed by learners, transformed or role-played, presented in the process of studying the English language. In other words, it can be a grammatical form or phenomenon, a phonemic phenomenon, a derived word, a lexical unit, a word-combination, or a dialogue or a text to comprehend or a dialogue to compose and role-play or a text to write or comprehend by listening.

HISTORY OF METHODOLOGY

Since Methodology of teaching languages dates back to Ancient Greece a great number of methods, methodological techniques and systems of teach­ing have been accumulated. A brief and oversimplified survey is rather useful for language teachers which would encourage them to learn more about the origins of their profession and help them evaluate the origin of the meth­odological techniques they use as well as many so-called innovations or new approaches which emerge from time to time [56, 3; 81, 10].

Below there are analyzed at length only basic methods and approaches, those which have had a decisive influence on development of Methodology and have been widely used in teaching foreign languages in general and comprehensive schools.

2.2.1. The Classical Greek Method

It was applied in Ancient Greece in the second and first centuries ВС and during first centuries of AD. When renewed in the 19-th century it has got the name of "the Method of the Governess". It was used to teach the Greek lan­guage to the Romans so that they were able to assimilate all the knowledge, data and scientific information, as well as court laws, culture and art accu­mulated and registered by that time only in Greek [50,6]. To convey the form and meaning of the Greek language Greek tutors of those times-in terms of modern methodology — used three approaches. The main ones were: gram­matical approach, direct approach and, to some extent, integrated approach.

To teach reading there were used hand-copied written manuscripts in the target language. To teach speaking there were invited tutors of Greek nation­ality speaking no Latin. They served as governors or governesses and lived in families of Romans and spoke Greek to them. Taught like this both at home and in school, people could understand and use the classical Greek language [51; 82].

It is worth mentioning that in some countries nowadays "the Method of the Governess" was widely used in Europe and especially in Russia from the times of Peter I. It is used even nowadays. However the conditions it was used in Ancient Greece and now are rather different [52, 107].

As one can see, the goal of the classical Greek method was to teach learn­ers all four types of speech activities: speaking, reading, writing and listening comprehension. These goals were socially grounded, satisfying the demands of the Roman Empire in its need of people having different kinds of profi­ciency in the Greek language.

According to the modern classification of Foreign Language Teaching Approaches we can say that the Greek Method refers to two methodologi­cal approaches: the Direct Approach because grammar was taught lexically and the Integrated Approach because all types of speech activities were taught simultaneously.

2.2.2. The Grammar-Translation Method

Historical Significance of the Grammar-Translation Method. The meth­od developed under the influence of the classical Greek method. It was the method by means of which the educated elites of all European countries be­came fluent readers, speakers and writers of the Latin language and owing to their knowledge of Latin they were able to go into their professions. Before

the Renaissance Latin (and Greek in a lesser degree ) was used as a language of higher learning throughout Europe because by that time most of the Eu­ropean vernaculars hadn't had their written languages. Latin was the official language in all European countries and till the 9-th century was used in all Europe as a language of everyday communication. Moreover, even in the 19-th century it was used in all European countries as a language of science, phi­losophy, religion, government, courts, commerce, politics, business, art and culture.

So, it can be inferred that studying Latin by means of the Grammar-Trans­lation Method was in great demand and was socially backgrounded.

The Grammar-Translation Method is the most long-lived method of teach­ing foreign languages , it dominated in Europe up to 1940 and its elements are widely used nowadays [56; 80].

However, appraising the method as a whole it should be said that its goals and techniques didn't stay unchanged during the centuries of its application because the method changed with the course of the time.

Not all methodologists in the world are unanimous in appreciating its true value. A great lot of them, especially those dealing with teaching oral speech, consider the Grammar-Translation Method as a one aimed at teaching formal grammar only and having nothing to do with speech com­munication.

On the other hand, judging from the peculiarities the method has under­gone during various historical periods one can state that at different historical epochs the Grammar-Translation Method has served different aims which reflect the changes in the kind of language and speech proficiency the society needed at various social formations.

Taking the above into account, application of the Grammar-Translation Method can be reasonably divided into five periods, each being caused by social, economic, geopolitical and linguistic changes in Europe.

The first period lasted up to the 9-th century AD.

The second period -up to the second half of the 17-th century.

The third period — up to the end of the 18-th century.

The fourth — up to the beginning of the 20-th century [56, 4; 51, 4-9].

The fifth period has lasted up to now. The Grammar-Translation Method, being integrated into the process of teaching foreign languages along with other methods, was used in schooling up to the second half of the 20-th cen­tury. And it can be stated with certainty that in its rather modified form it is also used nowadays.

⇐ Предыдущая123456789Следующая ⇒

Поделиться: