Some Methods of Extensive-communicative Education for
Sustainable Development in Foreign Language
Nadezhda Antonova
a
Chuvash State University named after I.N. Ulyanov, Moskovsky avenue, 15, Cheboksary, Russia
Keywords: Foreign Language, Extensive Training, Speech Abilities, Learners, Effective Way.
Abstract: This article discusses some of the methods of extensive teaching a foreign language. Experimental testing of
these techniques in the conditions of university teaching a foreign language has shown their high educational
effectiveness. This approach to language teaching involves reading a large number of unadapted texts in the
target language at high speed, with a general coverage of the content, and mostly independently. At the same
time, minimal control should be applied by the teacher. The teacher needs to guide students through special
assignments that will motivate and inspire action. This way of organizing educational process takes into
consideration interests, abilities, goals of every student and thus motivate them to work harder since one
student is always a part of a team so the results of cooperative work depend on individual work.
1 INTRODUCTION
Most of the currently used methodological systems of
teaching a foreign language are based on the idea of
memorizing certain elements of the text (morphemes,
words, phrases, "models", etc.), which are considered
as natural components that allow constructing a
speech utterance in a foreign language. At the same
time, the methodists, following the linguists and
psychologists, hypostatize the most ancient
constructivist model of speech activity dating back to
the period of the origin of writing.
All methodological recipes based on such a
concept of speech activity should be calculated in the
most effective way to “teach” students these discrete
elements of the language and the rules of nomination,
which are considered as their “meanings” (Antonova,
2014). For this, a wide variety of methods of
"introduction" and "consolidation" of such
educational material are used, and the ultimate goal is
usually a strong memorization of lexical and
grammatical forms and their meanings. Their use in
speech is considered as complex, but "automated"
procedures for recalling the learned elements in the
course of perception or construction (Grigorieva,
Kalganova, Mosolkova 2016).
a
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1213-8803
2 PROBLEM STATEMENTS
All this ultimately determines the intensive nature of
the vast majority of foreign language courses,
because memorization is really associated with
repeated repetition (DeVoss, Jasken, Hayden, 2002).
But at the same time, a sharp decrease in the
communicativeness of all intensive types of study of
educational material inevitably occurs, since the
repeatedly reproduced text or its segment is not
perceived by students as a speech message.
Studies carried out in recent years have shown the
complete inconsistency of the constructivist model of
language and speech activity, and although an
alternative model has not yet been developed, the
following has been reliably established:
1. Segments of a text taken for its constructive
components in a linguistic description are not
functional units of speech activity, and therefore their
memorization cannot lead to language acquisition.
2. Generation of speech is not a process of linear
construction of a text, and therefore, teaching the
skills of constructing texts from elements retained in
memory, it is impossible to develop skills of speech
activity (Drouin, 2011).
3. In the perception of speech, “understanding”
(interpretation) does not follow the “recognition”
Antonova, N.
Some Methods of Extensive-communicative Education for Sustainable Development in Foreign Language.
DOI: 10.5220/0010593805530558
In Proceedings of the International Scientific and Practical Conference on Sustainable Development of Regional Infrastructure (ISSDRI 2021), pages 553-558
ISBN: 978-989-758-519-7
Copyright
c
2021 by SCITEPRESS Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
553
(identification) of elements, but, on the contrary,
precedes identification. In other words, we do not
“understand” what we “know”, but we know what we
understand. Therefore, teaching a person to memorize
and recognize elements of a text, we do not teach him
to understand the text, but we develop a palliative
decoding skill.
4. Successful teaching of speech activity in a
foreign language occurs only in conditions of
communication in this language, and since most of
the intensive exercises have a very low
communicative value, their learning efficiency is
usually low (Herrero, Iborra, Nogueiras, 2016). It can
be argued, for example, that in lexical terms, in an
hour of intensive work, a student firmly masters 1-2
lexemes.
3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
These facts were the reason for the development and
experimental verification of the system of methods of
extensive teaching of a foreign language, in which the
goal of memorization is not set. The main goal of an
extensive foreign language course is to gradually
expand the range of a student's speech capabilities in
a given language. The main means are
communicative types of study of educational
material. Experimental testing of these techniques in
the conditions of university teaching a foreign
language has shown their high educational
effectiveness.
4 RESEARCH METHODS
It should be noted that the description given below of
some of the methods of extensively communicative
study of educational material most convenient for
work in a non-linguistic university is not exhaustive
and rather systematic, since a consistent system of
such a course has not yet been created.
4.1 Extensibility Techniques
4.1.1 Method 1. Linear Extensiveization of
Educational Material Study
Considering that the task of extensive language
teaching is not memorization, but an exercise in the
communicative study of the educational material, it is
possible to achieve a significant increase in the
effectiveness of learning if the situation is ensured
when the traditional educational material (for
example, texts of a textbook or additional reading
books) will be worked out by each student once "For
comprehension" (if the goal of language teaching is,
for example, the development of reading skills). It is
quite obvious that the volume of the material being
worked out in this case should increase several times.
In this case, you should adhere to the following
rules:
1. The content of the text must be unknown to the
student before it is worked out.
2. The text, worked out in a group lesson under
the guidance of a teacher, should not be assigned to
students as homework.
3. Checking homework should not turn into a
secondary non-communicative study of the same text.
4. The time spent for checking homework should
not exceed 10-15% of the study time of classroom
studies.
5. All the necessary explanations are given by the
teacher during the classroom study of the next portion
of the educational material.
6. If a system of current grades is used, then an
assessment of the degree of memorization of the
worked out material should be avoided; it is more
expedient to assess the student's "speech ability"
when perceiving new text material.
It has been experimentally established that such
an extensive study of 500-600 pages of informative
texts in a foreign language allows you to develop a
fairly strong reading and understanding skill, while
intensive study of 70-80 pages of similar texts during
the same time usually does not lead to the
development of such a skill.
4.1.2 Method 2. Extensive-Concentric Study
of Educational Material
If for some reason it is impossible to use the method
of linear extensization, you can use an extensive study
of the educational material with a finite radius of
extensibility (the minimum range correspond to the
usual intensive methods of working out the
educational material). Practice has shown that during
this work one should adhere to the following rules:
1. The effectiveness of training is directly
proportional to the size of the extensibility range
therefore it is advisable to make each center of the
study of a limited volume of training material as long
as possible. For example, when working out a
specialized textbook consisting of a certain number of
paragraphs or lessons, it is better to work through
(read) all the texts of the lessons sequentially (and
once) at the first c intermediate level of education, at
the second intermediate level of education, to perform
all the exercises for translation from a foreign into a
native all exercises of the "answer the questions"
type, on the fourth intermediate level of education
ISSDRI 2021 - International Scientific and Practical Conference on Sustainable Development of Regional Infrastructure
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intermediate level of education to do all exercises like
"fill in the gaps" type, on the fifth intermediate level
of education to make translation from native to
foreign, etc. If the educational material is a collection
of uniform texts or a single connected text, then
concentrate it processing must have its own
communicative task. In accordance with this
condition, the maximum communicativeness of work
on the language is preserved. On the other hand, such
a study of the textbook material significantly reduces
the harmful effect of the phenomenon of "vocabulary
change", which is observed in all advanced textbooks
due to the thematic diversity of the text material
(Kubota, Mishima, Nagata, 2004).
2. Extensive-concentric working out is the easiest
for the textual material of “fictional prose”, since here
we are dealing with texts that by their nature have an
“open range of addressees”, each of which can
perceive the given text at its own level of
understanding it. However, all the texts in the
specialty that are worked out in the university course
of a foreign language, it is much more difficult to
organize such a study of texts at the communicative
level. In this case, it is possible to preserve the
communicativeness of each concentrate only under
the condition of careful development of the
communicative task, which would allow at each
concentrator to pay attention to certain facts
illuminated by the text. Such assignments can only be
compiled by a specialist in a given branch of
knowledge; therefore a foreign language teacher
should carry out such work in close cooperation with
special departments (Kuhn, 2004).
4.2 Techniques for Creating
Communicative Situations
4.2.1 Method 3. Pair-Communicative Work
In intensive courses of a foreign language, the
technique of pair work is considered, first of all, as a
reliable means of dramatically increasing the activity
of students in the classroom, therefore, most of the
exercises developed for this purpose have low
communicative value (for example, reproducing
learned dialogues, question-and-answer work
according to a scheme familiar to both partners and
familiar textual material, etc.). An intensive course of
a foreign language, designed to memorize certain
elements of the text, cannot allow other use of the
paired work of students, since only “correctforms
should be memorized, and therefore reproduced. And
if, with the simultaneous paired work of the entire
group, the teacher is not able to control the
normativity of the students' speech, he is forced to
ensure this normativity of speech due to the loss of
communicativeness, that is, due to the fact that the
students in pairs reproduce one or another text,
previously worked out by them under the guidance of
the teacher.
Extensive teaching of a foreign language does not
have this limitation, since it is not intended for
memorization. From the modern psychological point
of views, it could be argued that during extensive
learning, not deterministic, but stochastic (probable)
“involuntary” memorization occurs, in which the
main requirement is not the obligatory presentation
and reproduction of only normative forms, but the
statistical prevalence of normative forms over non-
normative ones. If a student uses the normative forms
of a foreign language more often than non-normative
ones, then in the course of extensive language
teaching he will “master” the normative version of a
foreign language without constant control and
correction of the teacher. Thus, paired work of
students during extensive training can be purely
communicative, which is its main difference from
paired work in any intensive course of a foreign
language. For this, it is necessary that each member
of the couple informs their partner of material that is
completely unfamiliar to the latter (in content). In
other words, the main rule of pair communication
work is to prepare partners for a lesson using different
educational material. When doing this, consider the
following:
1. Pair-communication work can be carried out at
any stage of teaching a foreign language, at any level
of development of students' speech skills, on almost
any educational material (Landauer, Foltz, Laham,
1998). Depending on the speech skills of students and
the nature of the educational material, only the forms
of conducting pair-communication work can change.
2. In groups of students, no one yet knows how to
retell the text they have worked through, the most
effective form of pair-communication work is one or
another type of "dismembered reading".
3. As soon as students acquire the skill of
connected retelling of the content of the text,
regardless of the normality of their speech, it is
necessary to use as widely as possible the form of
“retelling with reverse retelling” in an extensive cycle
of working through the text material, namely: a)
students are given the task to read, understand and
retell a text of sufficient length, and the lower the
students' speech skills, the longer the text should be.
For literary adapted texts, it is better to take 1 minute
of speaking per 1 page of text as the initial norm, so
if a student has to retell his text for 15 minutes, then
he needs to “ask” at least 15 pages of coherent,
meaningful literary text; b) in classroom lessons, if
pair-communication work is carried out during one
academic hour, each of the partners retells the content
of his text to the other in 15 minutes; c) then each of
Some Methods of Extensive-communicative Education for Sustainable Development in Foreign Language
555
the members of the pair gives a “reverse retelling” of
what was listened to in 5-7 minutes.
4. If, in the course of pair communication work,
one of the partners is not able to understand a
particular word or expression, then the member of the
pair who prepared this material gives a translation
into Russian and necessarily forces his partner to
repeat the form that caused the difficulty.
5. The success of paired-communicative work of
students is assessed not by the normality of the
students' speech (this will immediately lead to
attempts to learn and reproduce the text), but by the
effectiveness of communication, that is, by
accessibility, clarity, consistency of presentation and
by the meaningfulness of "reverse retelling."
6. The widespread use of pair-communication
work allows to individualize tasks for students
without affecting the educational process in the
group, that is, almost every student can receive his
own individual task, which depends on the level of
his speech abilities (Ogoltsova, Khmelnitskaya,
2009).
7. Practice has shown that in order to expand the
range of a student's communicative capabilities and
for the fastest normalization of their speech in a
foreign language, it is advisable to constantly "change
pairs" so that each student of the group would be able
to work with each other member of the group for
about the same time during the period of one school
year.
4.2.2 Method 4. Homeostat
The use of this technique in an extensive
communicative course of a foreign language is based
on the fact that the communicative act is always two-
sided, and therefore, by changing the addressee of the
message (changing the partner in pair-communicative
work), we have the opportunity to put the student in
the conditions of a new communicative act without
changing the linguistic content of the transmitted
message. It should be noted that the above statement
is an experimentally verified fact: a student is able to
express the content of the same text 25-30 times
without decreasing "interest" if each time he has a
new partner and partner is not familiar with the
content of the text presented to him. At the same time,
there is a sharp increase in the effectiveness of the
student's speech activity. The “homeostat” technique
is advisable to use in cases where it is necessary to
transfer the group to the next level of speech activity
(for example, to the level of retelling, after the
students have mastered the skill of communicatively
directed reading and listening to a connected text). It
should be noted that a necessary condition for the
effective use of any form of pair communication work
is, according to our observations, the complete
exclusion of the impact of the written text during the
perception of the oral message of the partner. In
addition, we should remember that the program of
paired-communicative work of students should be
given in such a way that the time of perception of an
oral message without a speech reaction of the
perceiver does not exceed 10-15 minutes, because
otherwise attention is not scattered and the efficiency
of work is sharply reduced. One of the indisputable
advantages of the "homeostat" technique is the
constant readiness of the group to conduct an
effective paired-communicative study of the
educational material, regardless of whether the
students were able to prepare their homework for this
classroom lesson or not (if each student of the group
received his individual task and prepared it for work
in pairs with another student, then, by changing
partners, you can conduct a group lesson without
additional homework.
4.3 Techniques for Communicative
Study of Text Material
4.3.1 Method 5. Communicatively Directed
Reading
Very good results gives the method working on a
wide variety of texts so called “look and say”
technique developed by M. West. The essence of this
technique is that the procedure of reading aloud with
the help of a slight modification in the reading
technique (it is necessary to speak, to pronounce what
has been read, taking your eyes off the text and
addressing a real or imaginary interlocutor) turns into
something very close to "speaking". In this case, not
only the imitation of the communicative orientation
of speech occurs, but, with a sufficient length of the
speech segment reproduced "without peeping into the
text", psychologically there is no longer "reading",
but guided speaking "of the student in a foreign
language (Wei, Liu, 2012).
4.3.2 Method 6. Checking the
Communicativeness of Text Reading
In order to prevent the development of the harmful
skill of "sound production" when reading aloud, when
all the attention of the student is directed to the correct
pronunciation of foreign words and he does not
follow the content of the text, the requirement to
translate certain segments of the text, answers to
questions about the text etc. without looking at the
text. To accustom students to such work, the
following exercise should be performed several
times: all students in the group are invited to read the
new, but easy-to-understand text in a “look and say”
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way; the teacher approaches each student in turn and,
covering with his hand the part of the text he has just
read, asks the student to translate into his native
language the last phrase he read. This technique is
also an effective way to control home reading.
4.3.3 Method 7. Guided Reading
Even with a minimal vocabulary, a student is able to
comprehend any foreign text quite meaningfully
(follow the development of an action, for example) if
he has the appropriate skills of a communicative
approach to foreign text material. For the
development of such skills, the "guided reading"
technique was very useful, the essence of which is as
follows:
a) before reading the text, students are
offered preliminary questions that direct their
attention to certain facts of the text that are accessible
to their understanding, and if the questions are
formulated in Russian, then they can "enter" the
meanings of some unfamiliar foreign words
important for understanding the text; b) limited time
is given for answering the questions; it is best to
proceed from the calculation that the student should
perceive the content of a page of a foreign text in 4-5
minutes. Very good results are obtained using this
technique of working through texts, if at the same
time an audio recording is used, in which questions
on understanding the text are recorded and the
reaction time of the student is determined. Thus, we
can adjust the pace of reading the text.
4.3.4 Method 8. Dismembered Reading
One of the specific types of guided perception of the
text is its "dismembered reading", when the
"teaching" (this can be a teacher, if there is a frontal
work in a group, or a student, if there is pair-
communicative work) breaks the text into easy-to-
read "learners" semantic groups and requires the
"learner" to respond appropriately to each conceptual
group perceived by him.
At the initial stages of language learning, the
following task gives very good results: “translate the
semantic group into your native language, and then
reproduce it again in a foreign language”. It goes
without saying that in this case the student does not
use the written version of the perceived text, that is,
all the work is done “by ear”. Experience shows that
with such elaboration of the text, the "student" is not
able to simply reproduce the previously heard
semantic group, after he has translated it into his
native language. Here a kind of act of "directed
speaking" takes place, and the longer the semantic
group offered to the student, the closer his reaction is
to his own "speaking" in a foreign language.
If the text material is such that it does not cause
any special difficulties for the "learner" to understand,
then you can use the "uninterrupted" kind of
dismembered reading. But in this case, in order to
prevent mechanical reproduction of the text, it is
necessary to divide it into more extended semantic
groups (10-15 words).
4.3.5 Method 9. Anticipatory Reading
At the initial stages of training, in those cases when it
is necessary to develop a solid skill of the technique
of meaningful reading aloud, the "audited" version of
the dismemberment of reading is very useful. To do
this, it is necessary to prepare a record of a
sufficiently long (at least 60-70 pages) coherent
adapted text, which is pre-divided into semantic
groups and each semantic group is translated into the
student's native language. During listening, the
following sequence should sound:
1. Semantic group in the native language;
2. Pause for students to read the corresponding
semantic group in a foreign language;
3. Normative reading of the corresponding
semantic group in a foreign language;
4. Pause for student self-correction.
When working through such an audio recording,
students are given the task to read the corresponding
semantic group in the text in the first pause, then
compare their reading and read again more correctly.
It should be noted that although the students
themselves perceive such work only as an exercise to
develop the skill of reading technique, the very fact
of anticipatory study of a foreign text based on the
segments of the text that it comprehends and
independently identifies it leads to the development
of the skill of understanding a new text, that is, in
traditional terms, a stochastic “memorizing” a fairly
large amount of lexical and grammatical forms (after
two such studies of an adapted book of 80 pages, the
students “learned” 500-600 words each).
5 CONCLUSIONS
In conclusion, it should be emphasized that using
certain methods of extensively communicative
teaching of a foreign language, one should not expect
immediate results similar to those that we observe
when working with intensive teaching methods.
Having spent an intensive study of the limited
educational material, the teacher and students
immediately observe its result - the student is able to
reproduce certain segments of the text, to combine
new texts from the elements retained in memory.
Some Methods of Extensive-communicative Education for Sustainable Development in Foreign Language
557
With extensive work, a completely latent
development of speech skills occurs, the results of
which can be felt only after 2-3 months of constant
use. This process is natural, latent development,
therefore, the students themselves do not feel it as a
qualitatively new state. That is why the teacher has to
do special work from time to time in order to “show”
students their growth in speech abilities (for example,
to return to a text that students had difficulty in
mastering several months ago). But this
inconvenience is more than compensated for by the
extremely high "durability" of the skills and abilities
being developed.
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