Филологические науки/1. Методика преподавания языка и литературы

Omarova S.K., Altynkhanova A.Zh., Lits O.A.

Karaganda State Technical University

Methods of organization students’ autonomous work learning foreign language in non-linguistic universities.

The autonomous work is another kind of individual work of students, which being carried out without the direct tutor involvement in special designated classroom and in extracurricular time. The main purpose of student learning-training is forming competent, competitive specialist with higher education. The purpose of organization of autonomous work of students in non-linguistic universities is to establish and improve a certain level of professional competence of students in foreign language. Autonomous work of students contributes to the development of independence, responsibility, creative approach to solve professionally oriented problems.

Today English is the language of the world. Over 350 million people speak it as a mother tongue.

Kazakhstan is integrating into the world community and the problem of learning English for the purpose of communication is especially urgent today. To know English is absolutely necessary for every educated person, for every good specialist.

Learning a foreign language is not an easy thing. It is a long and slow process that takes a lot of time and patience. Reading books in the original, listening to the BBC news, communicating with the English speaking people will help a lot. When learning a foreign language you learn the culture and history of the native speakers.

Therefore, it is necessary to intensify every activity of students in a foreign language in class time and autonomous work of students for increasing the level of language proficiency.

There are three principal views at teaching a language:

- The structural view treats language as a system of structurally related elements. Cognitive method.

- The functional view sees language as a vehicle to express a certain function. Communicative method.

- The interactive view sees language as a vehicle for the creation and maintenance of social relations.

Cognitive approach. Introduces the four principle language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The teaching of grammar consists of a process of training in the rules, which make the students correctly express their opinion, understand the remarks, which are addressed to them, and analyze the texts which they read. The objective is that by the time they leave college, the pupilcontrols the tools of the language, which are vocabulary, grammar and orthography, to be able to read, understand and write texts in various contexts.

Communicative language teaching. Emphasizes the interaction of both the means and the ultimate goal of learning a language. This acquisition-focused approach consists of three stages: aural comprehension, early speech production, and speech activities, all fostering natural language acquisition. Pairing off of students into small groups to practice newly acquired structures becomes the major focus. Now the classroom becomes more student-centered with the tutor allowing for students to output the language more often on their own.

The direct method. This method is similar to communicative approach, but it uses only target language in teaching. This method encourages the natural acquisition of language. One of the main features of the method is, for example, using mono-lingual dictionaries, when an unknown word is explained with the help of the same language. To our mind, this must be the second stage of language education, when a lot of simple words are learned.

Silent Way. The teacher is usually silent, leaving room for the students to talk and explore the language. The role of the teacher is to give clues to the students, not to model the language.

In order to teach yourself a language, you need to choose good materials, which can be difficult because all language courses are packaged and marketed to present themselves as the best for all students, and as the one and only set of materials that you need in order to attain fluency. 

Using project methods in teaching a foreign language. With reference to a lesson of foreign language, the project is specially organized by the teacher and independently carried out by students complex of the actions, finished with creation of a creative product. A method of projects, thus, is the set of educational and cognitive modes which allow to solve this or that problem as a result of independent actions of students with obligatory presentation of results.

Let's result some examples how to achieve at once at the lesson with the help of project methods the several purposes - to expand student's vocabulary, to fix the investigated lexical and grammatical material, to create at the lesson an atmosphere of a holiday and to decorate an auditory of foreign language with colorful works of students.

The work with the projects teacher can realize in groups and individually. It is necessary to note, that the method of projects helps students to seize such competences as: to be ready to work in collective, to accept the responsibility for a choice, to share the responsibility with members of the team, to analyze results of activity.

The method of debates. It allows forming also the conscious attitude to consideration of problems, activity in its discussion, speech culture, an orientation on revealing of the reasons of arising problems and installation on their decision further. Here the principle of formation of critical thinking in pupils is realized. Language, thus, is simultaneously both the purpose and means of teaching. The method of debates helps pupils not only to seize all four kinds of speech activity, but to means of a language situation on a background of a problem in social and cultural sphere to find out the reasons of the arisen situations and to try even to solve them. Interest to the independent decision of a problem is the stimulus, driving force of process of knowledge.

Thus, application of a method of discussion allows making active cognitive activity of students, their independence, forms culture of creative operative thinking, creates conditions for use of personal life experience and received before knowledge for mastering new. As discussion and the decision of problems occurs during controlled group dialogue at participants skill to operate in interests of group is developed, there is an interested respect for interlocutors and conducts to formation of collective.

Games. The advantages of using games. Many experienced textbook and methodology manuals writers have argued that games are not just time-filling activities but have a great educational value. W. R. Lee holds that most language games make learners use the language instead of thinking about learning the correct forms. He also says that games should be treated as central not peripheral to the foreign language teaching programme. A similar opinion is expressed by Richard-Amato, who believes games to be fun but warns against overlooking their pedagogical value, particularly in foreign language teaching. There are many advantages of using games. "Games can lower anxiety, thus making the acquisition of input more likely" (Richard-Amato). They are highly motivating and entertaining, and they can give shy students more opportunity to express their opinions and feelings (Hansen). They also enable learners to acquire new experiences within a foreign language which are not always possible during a typical lesson.

Thus, in order to intensify students’ foreign language learning in non-linguistic university, it is necessary to pay attention to the organization of autonomous work of students engaging all available means to increase the motivation to learn.

References:

1. http://www.globibo.com/learning_methods.php

2. E. ter Horst and J. M. Pearce, “Foreign Languages and the Environment: A Collaborative Instructional Project”, The Language Educator, pp. 52-56, October, 2008.

3.  Joshua M. Pearce and Eleanor ter Horst, “Overcoming Language Challenges of Open Source Appropriate Technology for Sustainable Development in Africa”, Journal of Sustainable Development in Africa, 11(3) pp.230-245, 2010.