Анашева Д.К., Некрасова Е.А., Губайдулина И.Е.

Евразийский национальный университет, Астана, Казахстан

THE METHODS OF STYLISTIC MEANS TEACHING AT THE ENGLISH LESSONS

Stylistic means are integral parts of a language, they create authenticity and people can convey all subtle meanings and fully comprehend all structures with their help. According to Professor I.R.Galperin, all stylistic means of the English can be divided into expressive means and stylistic devices. Expressive means of a language are “those phonetic, morphological, word building, lexical, phraseological or syntactical forms which exist in language as-a-system for the purpose of logical and various dictionaries”. Inversion, capitalization, italics refer to this group. Stylistic devices in their turn are defined as “a conscious and intentional intensification of some typical structural and/or semantic property of a language unit (neutral or expressive)”. This group compiles metaphor, metonymy, simile, hyperbole and understatement.

Despite the fact that stylistic means are not widely spread while teaching English, they are great tools for improving the level and communication skills. Therefore, the use of these stylistic means should be promoted and teachers should take into account their efficiency while choosing activities for the classroom.

In general, stylistic devices and expressive means help in comprehending the language means for the transmission of thoughts and emotions, contribute better acquisition of language in the process of linguistic and cultural competence, facilitate development of knowledge and improving skills of speech practice.The benefits of the expressive means application are enormous; one of them is improvement of language proficiency. When dealing with expressive means students perceive real authentic material and they expand their knowledge as a consequence. Students study the peculiarities of native speakers’ speech, intonation, sentence structure. This fact in its turn helps them communicate easier and motivate them to take part in social interaction. Moreover, these devices are used to make an idea clearer, emphasize a point, or relate an insight to the reader. As a result students enrich their vocabulary and make their speech more sophisticated and rich. Furthermore,expressive means can stimulate creative activity in students, they can use them while writing essays or performing projects.Students have fun doing these kinds of exercises, and the quality of the products suggests that they are learning something; and here they understand how particular devices cause particular effects as well.

One of the important isssue here is to grade the level of material to the students’ level and choose relevant literary means while preparing exercises. Therefore when choosing stylistic means to teach students’ peculiarities such as age, level of development and communication should be taken into account.

Thus, this article deals with the practical application of above mentioned means in the classroom. All exercises, given below are aimed at clear explanation, practice and real use in verbal communication.

For instance, while using such expressive means as an inversion for emotional effect, a teacher can start the lesson from writing an easy comprehensible sentence on the blackboard.

“Never have I seen such a beautiful rose!” can be a perfect example. After that teacher should elicit students’ ideas about the reason for such reversed word order and ask them to change the sentence so that it has an ordinary order. “I have never seen such a beautiful rose” is undoubtedly an answer and the reason is to intensify the emotional strength of the statement. Also you need to point out that this expressive mean is called inversion.

Next step is a practice, during which teacher should encourage students to reverse the normal word order in sentences (or vice versa).

The following sentences can be used:

I have never seen such a play!

I did realize how wrong I had been (only then).

Came frightful days of cold and rain.

Rude am I in my speech.

Strange things have I in mind.

Never before had I seen such great sights.

I have never been to England.

I rarely send emails to my friends.

Subsequently, students can be divided into groups, and the following exercise can be offered: different extracts from TV-series will be shown, typescripts of video extracts will be handed out. The task is to find as more inversions as possible. When checking the answers, teacher should pay students’ attention to the significance of use the literary means in their speech to make it more natural and authentic.

For freer practice children can be asked to talk on the topic about their favorite city using the reversed structures learnt before: e.g. -Never before had I seen such great sights! Not only are there great shops in London but also some of the best museums in the world.This way we implement literary devices in real communication and motivate students to practice their use.

The following exercises are oriented to help students tackle such stylistic devices, as metaphor, simile, hyperbole and understatement. These literary devices are the most appropriate for schoolchildren as they are widely spread and comprehensible. For instance, the teacher can propose the students anuncomplicated algorithm for distinguishing some stylistic devices:

At the next stage teacher prompts students to find stylistic device and expressive means in the “I Have a Dream” speech. Firstly, teacher gives some historical background, in order to enhance their attention, printed copy of this speech and explains that they’ll be looking for the literary terms. While students are watching the video of the speech, they should underline and label examples of literary terms that they find. Students may work in small groups thus it can be a competition to see which group can find the most examples of literary terms. At the end of the task students hold a discussion about king’s use of these literary terms helped him to spread his message. The examples of literary devices are given below:

… Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. (Metaphor)

… It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.”(Personification)

… No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.(Simile)

Another source of literary devices is songs and film extracts. They are essential authentic materials and undoubtedly captivate students’ attention with their interesting content. Students are getting really involved into the lyrics so that they can easily find literary means. In addition, students enhance their vocabulary and face real modern speech.The following exercise encourages children to figure out if each one is an example of a simile, a metaphor, a hyperbole, alliteration, a personification:

1) You, with your voice like nails. (simile)

2)He’s so fluffy I’m gonna die! (hyperbole)

3)…cause I’m coming at you like a dark horse. (simile)

4)The wind is howling like the swirling storm inside. (simile)

5)Sunshine, she’s here, you can take a break. (metaphor)

6)…if you feel like a room without a roof (simile)

7)I could eat about a million and a half of these. (hyperbole)

My mama always said, life is like a box of chocolate. You never know, what are you going to get.(metaphor)

All these tasks are of great efficiency and teachers would benefit from them a lot.

Overall, the application of literary means in the classroom is a pivotal source for creating authentic atmosphere and encouraging students to speak. Children face natural speech and acquire language easier as a consequence.

List of literature:

1. Galperin I.R. Stylistics. M.,1981

2. V.I.Shakhovsky. English Stylistics, 2008