THE IMPORTANCE OF INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGIES

IN THE PROCESS OF TEACHING FOREIGN LANGUAGES

Alikhanova Altynay,

N.A. Yekibayeva – Supervisor

(L.N.Gumilyov Eurasian National University)

In the given article the importance of Innovative technologies in the process of teaching foreign languages is described.

Times change, fashions change… The role of English in the world has grown so much that there are reportedly more nonnative speakers of English than native speakers of English. The spread of English requires many more instructors. Those who teach English need to be able to manage a much broader range of teaching responsibilities and increasingly diverse learner needs. Teachers of English language know much more today about language learning and language teaching than they ever did before. We know more about second language acquisition and the myriad factors that influence it. We understand more about the intersection between teaching and learning, the classroom experience, and the value of the communication. Effective English language teachers are obliged to look carefully at their professional development in order to improve their experiences in classrooms and to minimize burnout. Teachers intrinsically want and need to participate in ongoing development and change in their own professional lives. Teachers need to be supported in their efforts.

Teachers have always been expected to set a good example for learners, to provide a model of behavior. The model can and does change. Teachers have found many ways or methods for teaching languages. All have been admired models in some time or place, but perhaps have been ridiculed or dismissed in other contexts. [1;32]

Within the last quarter century, Communicative Language Teaching has been put forth around the world as the new and innovative technologies to tech English as a second or foreign language. Proponents of the communicative language teaching approach argue that English Foreign language students are in need of Communicative Language Teaching methodology in order to gain facility and confidence I using English. The communicative language teaching approach features high profile teacher roles, frequent pair work or small group solving, students responding to authentic samples of English, extended exchanges on high interest topics and the integration of the four basic skills, namely speaking, listening, reading and writing.

Teaching materials, course descriptions, and curriculum guidelines proclaim a goal of communicative competence. Learners’ communicative needs provide a framework for elaborating program goals in terms of functional competence.

Now it is important to any teacher to be able to work with the computer, to use the Internet for preparation various additional materials. Through the Internet it is possible easily to receive a professional advice, to communicate with bearer of English language, It is obvious, that at a lesson of foreign language it is difficult to do without means of training. nevertheless still there are schools, where not only computers and Internet, but also the video and audio equipments are considered as inadmissible luxury. But teachers of a foreign language should use audio-visual materials to stimulate conversation.

So recently, computers and software in Kazakhstan have become widespread in homes and their uses have expanded so dramatically that the majority of language teachers must now begin to think about their implications for teaching and learning. Although more recently computers in our schools also began to be more common and accessible to teachers and students, many practicing language teachers appear to know what to do with them and perceive technology as burden and a problem rather than as any effective tool for advancement of language teaching and learning. [2;36]

Integrative computer assisted language teaching and learning was based on two important technological development through 1990’s: rise of multimedia capabilities of computers and Internet. Multimedia computers allowed a variety of media – text, graphics, sound, animation, and video – to be accessed on a single machine. What makes multimedia even more powerful is that it also entails “hypermedia” and “interactivity”. That means the multimedia resources are all linked together and that learners can navigate their own path simply by pointing and clicking a mouse. Multimedia provides a number of advantages for language learning: providing more authentic language learning environment since listening is combined with seeing, just like in the real world.; skills are easily integrated, since the variety of media make it natural to combine reading, writing, speaking and listening in a single activity; students have great control over their learning, since they can not only move in their own pace but even select their own individual paths, going forward and backward to different parts of the program, honing in on particular aspects and skipping other aspects altogether; it facilitates focus on the content, without sacrificing a secondary focus on language form or learning strategies.

So in our investigation we emphasize and differentiate three types of multimedia projects: embellished documents, linear multimedia presentation (a slide show) and hypermedia. Knowing about the different categories of multimedia projects should help teacher think about multimedia projects to use in teaching.

Now we tried to differentiate all of them. The Internet is an enormous resource of information which is getting easier to access. It is a resource that can be exploited in many ways. The nature of the internet also means that students can create their own pages which can be seen by anyone in the world with internet access. As English is the dominant language on the Internet, it means they will be exposed to English and using it for variety of motivating and interesting tasks. Some site on the Internet offer interactive grammar exercises – this means that when the students complete an exercise their answers are checked and corrected automatically. One site that does offer this is BBC World Service Learning. It is possible to interact not only with the computer but also with other learners around the world.

Computer technology is becoming cheaper and more available around the world. However, because it is a relatively new and rapidly changing technology the teacher needs to be familiar with the equipment and the possibilities. [3;48]

Nowadays our government makes all things to increase the level of introducing new technologies in our country. Schools have opportunity to make computer classroom at them. Teachers and students have the ability of using information systems.

Computers are increasingly a part of everyday life and the Internet has, since the middle of the 1990s, revolutionized communication. This revolution has found its way into the classroom.

An embellished document is a text document that has been enhanced with other multimedia elements. Student authors might add pictures, sounds, or video segments to text because information in these alternative formats seems more informative or more interesting than text alone. Students can prepare some form of embellished document with nearly every word processing program and with other tools such as paint programs and web authoring programs.

If embellished document is to include sound or video, the audience will have to view the document using a computer. The author does not have to be present or use his or her own computer to show this kind of document to a reader. It is as easy to send someone a word processing file on disk as it is to send a letter, and embellished documents can usually be sent as an attachment to an e-mail message. Students in other classrooms or schools can easily view the document containing sound and video that the teacher or students have created. If the document contains text and still graphics, students can print and distribute it. Common examples of embellished documents are student-authored newsletters, reports, and instructional manuals. A single web page might also be considered an embellished document.

A slide show is a linear multimedia presentation that might be used as a self-contained presentation or may accompany a speech or lecture. The defining attribute of this format is the linear nature of the presentation. Slide show can be viewed on the computer screen or by using a projection system, recorded on videotape for presentation, printed to produce a series of overhead transparencies, or made available on the Web. Like all the other projects a slide show can incorporate text, several types of graphics, and sound. It is fairly common for instructors to use what is frequently referred to as presentation software to prepare and present multimedia material as support for their lectures. Students can also use the same software to prepare their own presentations.

A hypermedia project differs from embellished documents and linear multimedia in the complexity of the pathways that are available through the information and the degree of control that users can exercise in navigating those pathways. Moreover, hypermedia authors segments information into meaningful units and create pathways among the units. In creating the units of information and establishing the links, authors attempt to anticipate the types of information different users might find helpful and provide convenient ways for these users to explore. Users decide which of the options provided by the author they want or need to experience. [4;56 ]

As it is clearly shown, the three formats we described differ in complexity. Embellished documents or slide shows can be used in any situation in which reports are used to develop communication skills and encourage students to think about course content. Nearly all classes require to write reports or research papers or to give presentation of some type. Incorporating a few graphics or a short video segment takes a little additional time and new skills but doe not require a serious deviation from existing activities. On the other hand creating an interactive hypermedia project does involve committing a significant amount of time to developing some new skills in using technology and developing the project itself. In deciding to embark on involving students in developing hypermedia, teacher needs to be committed to something that is currently quite out of the ordinary.

And now we shall speak about software tools for creating above described projects.

A basic set of tools can be used to construct the entire range of project types, and the project types can be applied to a variety of content areas, at many levels of sophistication, by students at all grade levels. The time that students spend learning how to use the software tools and to design each category of multimedia will be spent efficiently if they continue to use similar software tools to design similar projects. Whether students will eventually communicate with multimedia the way many adults now communicate with text remains to seen, but it is reasonable to predict that multimedia – very possibly student-authored multimedia – will play an increasingly important role in academic settings.

Literature:

1. Brownell, E., G. 1987. Computers and teaching. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing company.

2. Bovtenko M.A. (2005) Computer-Assisted Language Learning. Moscow: Flinta and Nauka.

3. Carr K. How can we teach critical thinking? // ERIC Digest. 1990.