Ella Shustikova

Kostanai State University named after A. Baitursynov , Kazakhstan.

The Role of Listening Comprehension in the Realization of the Competent Approach in Teaching a Professionally-Oriented Foreign Language

Language is a major means of communication, which is essential for the existence and development of the human community. Expansion and quality change in the nature of international relations of our country make foreign languages, particularly English, be really claimed for the practical and intellectual activity. Very often, students acquire the lexical and grammatical knowledge and skills but cannot understand each other, the result of this is the breach of communication and contact between the people. Under the circumstances, there is a necessity for the development of lexical skills of the listening comprehension as an indicator of the individual's ability to understand the speech of a native speaker. The training of a highly qualified professional of any profile, who owns the necessary competences, is an urgent task of non-language higher educational institutions. In linguistics, there are two notions-to speak a foreign language and to speak professionally a foreign language. The latter notion presupposes that the person has communicative skills and abilities connected with his or her profession.

It is known that in the practice of teaching a foreign language listening teaching methods are the least developed. For example, Kables wrote that the uncharted area of teaching methods of foreign languages is listening comprehension. Listening comprehension is a complex ability to understand on hearing a communication under natural conditions. One of the main reasons for the lack of attention to listening comprehension on the part of practitioners is the fact that, until recently, it was considered to be an easy skill. There was a point of view that if when teaching oral speech a teacher will focus all efforts on speaking and mastering this skill, students will learn how to understand a foreign speech spontaneously, without special education. This point of view was proved to be wrong by the theory and by practice. The data clearly showed that the psychology of perception and understanding of the speech sounds is very a complex mental activity. It is known that the bandwidth of the audio channel is far less than that of visual (6,5 times) , and audio memory of the majority of people is less developed than visual, and auditory reception is single and inimitable.

Thus, listening comprehension is not an easy form of speech activity. Z. Kochkina notes in her article that "...learning a foreign language and speech skills development are carried out primarily through the hearing. So listening comprehension should be developed better than other skills,and actually listening causes the greatest difficulties”. The most significant difficulty of the listening comprehension is the lack of an auditor's ability to control the activities. Listening comprehension is the only kind of speech activities in which nothing depends on the person performing it. Unlike reading, writing or speaking, he is helpless to change anything in the activity, facilitate, adapt to the possibilities and thus create favorable conditions for the reception of the information. When teaching listening comprehension, it’s recommended to use authentic material. Authentic materials are materials, taken from the original sources, which are characterized by the naturalness of the lexical and grammatical, situational adequacy of the used language means, they also illustrate authentic cases of word usage which, although not being specifically designed for training purposes, may be used when learning a foreign language. Authentic audiovisual videos-TV advertisement, movies and documentaries, TV shows, cartoons, clips, news and so on. Authentic audio material -audio books, songs, commercials and radio and so on. Authentic visual material-pictures, photos, slides, graphics, signs, cards, etc. Authentic print material -newspaper articles, sports columns, programs, brochures and travel guides for tourists, etc. The benefits of authentic materials as learning tools are evident. The language presented in authentic materials, acts as a real communication, reflects the real linguistic reality. With the use of authentic materials the risk of distorting the foreign reality decreases, being evidence of modern civilization in the area where the language is spoken, they reflect the ideas and opinions, common in the society. Due to the absence of didactical orientation, the information presented in the authentic materials in the non-language environment, has a high level of credibility; naturalness arises great cognitive activity, while the training materials perform purely educational function and reflect fictitious situations which do not exist outside of classes, thus reducing the motivation, reliability of the presented data. Despite the advantages of authentic materials, their use is limited in terms of learning a foreign language outside the language environment, first of all due to the level of language proficiency of students and of the socio-cultural difficulties. The limiting factor is the abundance of visual, verbal, audio information, which is difficult to manage within the lessons. Thematic diversity also makes it difficult to harmonize the authentic material with the lexical topic which is being studied at the moment.

Taking into consideration all mentioned above, the most appropriate sequence of the information sources included into the pedagogical process seems to be reasonable:

1The teacher’s speech + picture visibility. 2 The teacher’s speech.

3The teacher’s speech + movie. 4Television.

5A movie + unknown voice (s). 6 A record (the teacher’s speech).

7A record (unfamiliar voices). 8 CD. 9Radio.

Foreign language teaching at non-language high schools are multi-purpose in nature. The practical aim is to develop various competencies that shape the ability and willingness to cross-cultural communication and solving professional tasks.

References.

1Выгодский А.С. Избранные психологические исследования, М.,1956.

2Колкер Я.М., Устинова Е.С., Практическая методика обучения иностранным языкам. М. Издательский центр « Академия», 2000.

3Елухина Н.В. Основные трудности аудирования и пути их преодоления. Издательство «Русский язык» 1999.