Мейрамова С.А.

Евразийский национальный университет имени Л.Н.Гумилева

Казахстан, г.Астана

How to develop an understanding of the role of rules and laws in civil societies on the English lessons

Rules and laws affect our daily lives. They pervade our personal space at home and at work, our recreational activities as part of sports and games, and our interactions with others at the street corner, in the market place, at school, at the bank, in restaurants, at the post office, and so forth. Most people would agree that rules and laws provide some degree of order, predictability, and security in our lives. Yet, not all rules and laws are just. This lesson will give students the opportunity to explore select aspects of rules and laws. Students will learn the vocabulary and concepts associated with the topic, practice their English language skills, and develop an understanding of the role of rules and laws in civil societies. In addition, here is some information about the experience gained in this respect.

While training Law students at our English courses we guide by the communicative approach in order to equip them with specialized skills that enable them to function in English in their professional life and to be adaptive to changing conditions of scientific research. It presupposes acquiring habits of language behavior and developing communicative proficiency in all language skills: reading, speaking, listening, writing, and translating.

In designing the courses for Law students, it is important for the teacher to know their background knowledge both of the language and the subject matter. We think that the success of teaching depends on the students’ aspirations and motivations in terms of how they view themselves and how they think the usage of English will help them to improve their image as lawyers.

We have adopted learner-centered approach to language teaching, which implies collaborative effort between teachers and students since students are involved in decisions on content selection, methodology.

In order to provide a reasoned basis for the subsequent process of the course we analyze the students’ needs, wants, bearing in mind the importance of their motivations in learning. The analysis is a rather complex process. The current level of English of the students is ascertained through diagnostic testing. The results show that students who come to the University, as young adults possess intermediate competence in English. However, some of them are rather proficient.

The English course for Law students includes many language exercises: grammar, reading, listening, which are clearly necessary for academic study in the field of Law. As these students have a strong need in reading activities, we have devoted much space in our courses to developing reading skills. It was also one of the reasons that encouraged us to develop a special complex of course-books based on “academic reading” (intensive reading for very detailed understanding and other kinds of reading) and one “home-reading” (controlled reading). Students are also offered various forms of activities: reformulating the information in a text in another form such as a summary, chart or diagram.

Specialized terminology of the English legal system and law terms (e.g. practitioner, headnote, etc.) offer many difficulties in comprehension of their usage and particularly in reading special texts. Moreover, mastering vocabulary should be regarded as a skill. In our courses the students are taught this strategy with the help of vocabulary exercises which deal both with structure (word-formation, preposition, collocations) and semantics (deducing meaning from context, using word roots to infer meaning, giving synonyms, antonyms).

If we want our courses to be effective the teaching of both language skills and knowledge and skills required by the special context have to be integrated. Students are encouraged to expand their vocabulary and to activate the knowledge in oral activities, which range from controlled practice to free discussion and case studies or moots like presentation of imaginary cases in court. Such activities are done in pairs or groups that give every student a chance to speak and practice the language and give the opportunity to think of their ideas and gain confidence.

To meet students’ special interests we have included a number of other oral activities in our course, e.g. legal exercises. Their aim is to highlight the relevant legal concepts (e.g. the courts and the provision of legal services) and to compare aspects of their own legal system with what they have learnt about English legal system. Carrying on them through essay plans, problem solving contributes to the development of skills to hold a discussion in the field of Law. It also trains students to think analytically and generally leads to a lot of lively oral work.

To be more effective, the activity takes place in courses and in the following stages: 1. Students perform different oral and written tasks destined to the learning and correct pronunciation of the sustained-content vocabulary appearing in the lesson, a task which is also reinforced with other activities such as definition, classification or explanation of processes where such terms are likely to appear. 2. Students view a video sequence from “The making of a micro jurisdiction process” corresponding to the vocabulary learnt a few days before. The teacher can stop the video whenever he considers that certain clarification is needed. After the complete viewing, the teacher checks the level of comprehension by means of spontaneous questioning.

The findings obtained from this research provide some significant value, suggesting that: a) Students' tendency toward working in pairs or small groups is well perceived by teachers. b) A significant number of students expressed their views in favour of more outside-classroom activities that would help them gain proficiency in English; teachers' responses seem to correlate with these views. c) Types of learning that focus merely on receptive skills do not appeal to students; there is a significant tendency among learners towards class content that observes both receptive and productive skills emphasized equally. d) In classroom sessions, students would like to see more instructive television programs shown to them, rather than extensive use of blackboard or tape recorders. g) Finally, students expressed views that they would only feel satisfied with their language proficiency level when they see themselves involved and actively functioning in English. In conclusion, we can say that effective language teaching and learning can only be achieved when teachers are aware of their learners’ needs, capabilities, potentials, and preferences in meeting these needs.