Pedagogical conditions of using a Wimmelbuch at English lessons at primary school

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Pedagogical conditions of using a Wimmelbuch at English lessons at primary school

Problem setting in general. Knowing foreign languages is a necessary part of life and an important pre-condition for personal, cultural, professional and economic contacts in modern society. The expansion of international relations of Ukraine and its collaboration with other countries of the world require the substantial changes in foreign language education and, above all, in the methodology of learning a foreign language. That's why it is necessary to organize the learning process in such a way that schoolchildren are able to use English in real life communication situations and not only in training but also while getting knowledge.

The foreign language is learnt from the first form since 2012 and bases for creating favourable conditions for its mastering are noticed in the legal documents, such as the Law of Ukraine «On Education» (1991), «On General Secondary Education» (1999), National Doctrine of Education Development (2002), the State Standard of Full Secondary Education (2004), the Concept of Special Education (2003), «The West-European Recommendations on Language Education…» (2003). Legal documents make it possible to pass to a new stage - the sustainable system development of studying foreign languages, that is characterized by the transition to a new paradigm of education - personality and activity, based on competence, cognitive and communicative, and activity approaches. So, the problem of learning a foreign language as a means of communication is particularly important in modern school and requires new approaches to the educational process, improving its forms and methods. One of the reserves to intensify the process of learning a foreign language is using visual teaching aids.

The latest papers and publications on the problem. Nowadays much attention is given to the problem of forming and improving foreign language communication skills of primary schoolchildren in scholarly works and case studies. So, the search of ways to improve the efficiency of foreign language teaching to primary schoolchildren is investigated by N. Biriukevych, O. Kolominova, O. Metolkina, O. Petrenko, V. Redko, S. Roman and others. The problem of the specific of communicative phenomena is studied by such educators as D. Aholtsova, M. Bovtenko, O. Bihych, L. Byrkun, I. Hrechykhin, V. Demiankov, Yu. Karaulov and others. The problem of forming and testing foreign language communicative competence is considered by S. Baluian, O. Vasilieva, H. Lytvynenko, L. Nevirko, and the development of lexical competence is studied by I. Batsenko, S. Shatilova, H. Kytaihorodska, M. Shmit and others. The relevance of the article is conditioned by the lack of a complex analysis of the problem of implementing a Wimmelbuch (as visual teaching aids) in teaching a foreign language to primary schoolchildren.

The aim of the study is to analyze the problem of implementing visual teaching aids, in particular a Wimmelbuch for the formation of foreign language communication skills at English lessons at primary school. The aim involves the following tasks: to define the factors that influence forming primary schoolchildren's communicative competence; to find out the pedagogical conditions of the problem of using visual aids (a Wimmelbuch) in teaching a foreign language at primary school.

Research methods. Such methods as analysis, synthesis, and systematization are used to achieve the aim of the article. They help to get to the essence of the outlined problem and pass logically from a less general idea to more general one.

Presentation of basic research material. Reformation of the modern education system provides changes in teaching foreign languages. Teaching a foreign language to students is focused on forming foreign language communicative competence according to the requirements of the Conception of

Language Education, the Common European Recommendations of Language Education and other state regulations. The current labor market conditions require from the organization of the educational process at secondary school to lay the strong foundation for the formation of initial professional skills of an individual. It means that learning a foreign language must have both communicative-oriented and professionally-directed nature. This approach promotes expanding students' consciousness and outlook, their personal culture and competence, forming multicultural understanding the world. Also a foreign language has considerable potential for personal development and its study promotes developing students' self-consciousness and their personal satisfaction of the educational process. Besides, using a foreign language as a means of communication extends future opportunities of personal contacts of students and promotes forming a whole picture of the world [8, p. 10].

The formation of communicative competence is possible due to creating real communication situations that arise in different spheres of life and dealing with various topics. According to this fact, students' training activity is organized so that they do motivated actions with speech material to solve communication problems on achieving communicative tasks and purposes of communication [1, p. 12].

A number of factors influences forming communicative competence. There are internal and external factors. The internal items are motivational sphere; an internal position of an individual; development and formation of «I» and a sense of individual identity. The external factors include social conditions: a society in which the concrete language is used, its social structure, the age difference between native speakers, social status, levels of culture and education, place of residence, and the difference in their speech behavior according to the situation of communication. Internal and external factors are interrelated, the external items depend on internal ones and vice versa [1, p. 116]. Constant changes taking place in our life and life of our country require a high level of competence in all the above mentioned questions, appropriate behavior in a certain social and psychological situation for achieving a goal to be a highly educated person.

Forming the appropriate level of communicative competence is taken place because of existing favorable didactic conditions, they are: 1) taking into account student age features; 2) successful socialization and favorable social conditions; 3) optimal mechanisms of speech worked out by teachers;

4) teachers' pedagogical skills; 5) stimulating students to study a language;

6) implementing techniques of activation of student educational and cognitive activity; 7) providing students with learning materials that contain necessary information for the complex forming communicative competence; 8) development of students' cognitive activity; favorable conditions and communicative behavior of interlocutors; 9) creating typical communicative situations in learning process [3, p. 128].

Communicative activity is a system of consistently specified actions, each of them is aimed at solving the problem and can be considered as a certain «step» towards the purpose of communication. Also communicative activity is a complex multichannel system of interaction between people. Communicative competence is the necessary condition of the successful individual's realization. A competence approach to language learning is necessary one in today's conditions for the successful achievement of aims in real life situations [2, p. 69 - 74].

The analysis of educational and methodological literature shows that nowadays there are the following features of the communicative approach in learning a foreign language:

1) a language is examined as a means of communication, preference is given to mastering conceptions and functions;

2) a language is studied on the basis of students' personal activity. They are the main independent subjects of learning, which cover cognitive strategies and methods of learning a foreign language, communication skills and are responsible for their own successes and failures;

3) the main purpose is communicative competence, social relevance and acceptability;

4) a lesson of foreign language is examined as communicative activity. It means the refusal of the advantage of formal language exercises in favor of intellectually-oriented tasks that enable to learn a foreign language as treasury of cultural and socio-cultural information, and as the basic means of intercultural communication during this communication process;

5) work on different types of speech activity has a complex trait;

6) typical forms of interaction are built as work in pairs and groups;

7) a teacher's role is changed totally: he/she stimulates communication, helps students to achieve an autonomy in defining their aims and ways of learning a foreign language, etc. [7, p. 56 - 132].

The innovative approach in learning a foreign language provides positive motivation of gaining knowledge of the subject, promotes forming interest in language, stimulates students' speech activity. The innovation is implemented by new ideas and technology that concern using interactive methods in training and educational activity of a teacher [5, p. 167].

Using visual teaching aids (objects of the material world that are used in the learning process to engage all the sense-organs of a child for better perception of things, phenomena and forming the necessary knowledge and skills) is justified methodically at the primary stage of learning a foreign language [6, p. 187 - 191].

The visual principle plays a special role in learning a foreign language. The task to create the system of reflection of the objective world in forms of a second language arises when students are mastering a foreign language. The objective world is created using visual aids in learning in the absence of foreign language environment at school. Using different visual aids (objects, models, pictures, gestures, movements, movies, etc.) a teacher creates in learning aims fragments of objective reality, which are associated with proper foreign language forms by students in learning communication. As a result, forms of a foreign language for students are reflection of the appropriate fragments of the objective world and repository of certain information exchanged in different communication situation.

Visual aids in learning a foreign language is an important means of both semantization and mastering situational conditionality of a language. Learning situations are created with visual aids. Oral communication is proved in such situations so that a language reaction on objective reality and life situations can be mastered.

Thus, visual teaching aids of a foreign language for practical aims help to expose the contents of statements and create life communication situations. The visual principle of learning a foreign language is a form of situational visual aids.

It is necessary to use different types of visual aids in the same issues. It is very important to use visual aids purposefully. When students have necessary imagined units, use them to create concepts and to develop a child's abstract thinking. Visual aids always are combined with the teacher's word in learning practice. Master forms of a combination of words and visuals, their variants and comparative effectiveness enables a teacher to use visual aids creatively according to a didactic task, features of learning material and specific learning environment.

V. Shatalov developed the method of intensifying the educational process that included new methods of teaching, creating visual textbooks and their implementation. The central element is the supporting signals. Unlike the traditional visual aids, they are not images, but codes of objects, phenomena, processes, concepts, events, arranged in certain sequence and space, forming a proper image, illustration or poster and promote more rapid and strong memorization. The psychological basis of this technique is mnemonics [9].

A Wimmelbuch or an activity picture book [10] as a visual aid for forming students' foreign language lexical and communicative competence is created on the basis of the noted method in practice of learning a foreign language.

It is known that activity at a lesson depends on an aim and objectives, students' age features and interests. According to the basic «The Western - European Recommendations on Language Education…» [4] foreign language lessons are to be communication directed. Therefore, the priority types of activity are those which are aimed at forming students' skills to use a language as a means of communication.

The students' interest in learning a foreign language depends on the motivation of educational actions in the classroom. So, using such kind of visual aids as activity picture books helps students to effective mastering a foreign language material.

A Wimmelbuch is an activity picture book with bright and vivid illustrations, a great number of details, characters that are easy to recognize, and with the almost absence of a text. A Wimmelbuch is also called a living book, because it is about life: there are lots of swarming characters and events. Besides, it is the same atmosphere as in real life there - real characters (children, parents, their friends, neighbours, pets, etc.) are engaged in routine (eating, walking, going to school, visiting, cleaning snow, leaves, playing, bathing, etc.) in real life situations (at home, in the yard, shop, outdoors, etc.). A student looking through this book follows its characters everywhere, where they find themselves [10]. Thus, proper foreign language environment is created that helps to expose the contents of utterances and forms real life situations for communication.

Summary. Using a Wimmelbuch at English lessons helps to form foreign language communicative competence creating typical models of real communicative situations that arise in different spheres of life and deal with various topics. Students' training activity is organized in such a way that they perform motivated actions with speech material to solve communicative tasks focused on achievement of aims and purposes of communication. By the purposeful use of a Wimmelbuch the learning situations, in which the oral communication is functioning, are made and in such a way mastering the linguistic reaction in objective reality and everyday life situations is realized.

References

wimmelbuch english lesson school

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