Some Methods of Extensive-communicative Education for

Sustainable Development in Foreign Language

Nadezhda Antonova

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).

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

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 “correct” forms

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”

ISSDRI 2021 - International Scientiﬁc and Practical Conference on Sustainable Development of Regional Infrastructure

556

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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