Formation of english grammatical competence of future teachers using educational strategies

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Formation of english grammatical competence of future teachers using educational strategies

Iryna Kornieieva, Ph.D. (Pedagogy), Associate Professor, Associate Professor of the Philology and Translation Department, Kyiv National University of Technologies and Design

In this paper we investigated the content, structure andfeatures of the formation of English grammatical competence offuture teachers. The definition of grammatical competence, the aspects it includes (morphological, lexical, phonetic, syntactic, and orthographic) were outlined. The ability to use grammatical phenomena in speech activity in various speech situations of the future teachers ' professional activity was explored; concepts and rules, means of expression ofgrammatical categories; stylistic features of a foreign language (grammatical skills (reproductive and receptive), grammatical knowledge, grammatical awareness were elaborated. The concept of active and passive grammatical minimums was given. The difficulties offorming grammatical competence, which are caused by age characteristics, psychological and individual features of future teachers were determined. The definition of the term “educational strategy” was given, various classifications were considered and their role in the educational process was outlined.

Keywords: the English language grammatical competence; future teachers; difficulties in grammatical competence formation; educational strategies; cognitive strategies; higher educational institutions.

english grammatical competence

Ірина Корнєєва, кандидат педагогічних наук, доцент, доцент кафедри філології та перекладу Київського національного університету технологій та дизайну

ФОРМУВАННЯ АНГЛІЙСЬКОМОВНОЇ ГРАМАТИЧНОЇ КОМПЕТЕНТНОСТІ В МАЙБУТНІХ УЧИТЕЛІВ З ВИКОРИСТАННЯМ НАВЧАЛЬНИХ СТРАТЕГІЙ

У пропонованій статті нами було досліджено зміст, структуру та особливості формування англомовної граматичної компетентності у майбутніх учителів. Визначено поняття граматичної компетентності, аспекти, які вона включає (морфологічний, лексичний, фонетичний, синтаксичний, орфографічний); окреслено вміння та навички використання граматичних явищ у мовленнєвій діяльності в різних мовленнєвих ситуаціях; оволодіння граматичними поняттями і правилами, засобами вираження граматичних категорій; усвідомлення стилістичних особливостей іноземної мови; основні її компоненти: граматичні навички (репродуктивні та рецептивні), граматичні знання, граматична усвідом- леність. Розкрито поняття активного та пасивного граматичних мінімумів.

Визначено труднощі формування граматичної компетентності, які зумовлені віковими, психологічними, індивідуальними особливостями майбутніх учителів; іноземною мовою, що вивчається та умовами навчання. Дано визначення терміна “навчальна стратегія ”, розглянуто різні класифікації та визначено їх роль у навчальному процесі.

Виокремлено концептуальну базу формування англомовної граматичної компетентності, зокрема таких принципових положень сучасної стратегії її формування: процес формування англомовної граматичної компетентності організовується як модель реальної комунікації, передбачає створення автентичних умов процесу соціалізації студентів, відбувається з урахуванням індивідуальних навчальних стилів майбутніх фахівців і їх навчальних стратегій в межах формування комунікативної компетентності та стимулює розвиток у студентів мовленнєвої, розумової, пізнавальної активності та створює “картину світу” для формування мовної особистості майбутніх учителів.

Ключові слова: англомовна граматична компетентність; майбутні учителі; труднощі у формуванні англомовної граматичної компетентності; навчальні стратегії; когнітивні стратегії; заклади вищої освіти.

Introduction

The current state of methodical science is characterized by the prominence of two main paradigms of scientific knowledge - cognitive and communicative. In the communicative paradigm language and its analysis are mainly associated with speech activity, in the cognitive paradigm - with cognitions, that is, knowledge and related structures and processes, with all methods of obtaining, processing, fixing, saving and using knowledge [2; 6; 8]. At the same time, a synthesis of the above paradigms of knowledge is necessary to solve a number of methodological problems. Formation of English grammatical competence of future teachers using educational strategies is one of them.

Analysis of research relevance

The challenges of the War against Russian aggression pose new challenges to Ukrainian state education. In the conditions of martial law, the Ministry of Education and Science is doing everything possible to ensure the sustainability of education and teaching in Ukraine. It tries to create a safe environment for students and tutors, especially for those, who are forced to leave for safe regions in Ukraine or abroad. These challenges put before Ukrainian education the main task of ensuring that the citizens of our country acquire practical knowledge, namely, the formation of communicative competence.

Grammatical competence is important for successful foreign language communication, as it helps to express one's own thoughts clearly and logically, to understand the thoughts of others, as well to understand the structure of the English language, ways of word formation and syntactic constructions [11].

That is why, the tutor must teach students to use different strategies and techniques to learn new grammatical structures. The use of various educational strategies is the main basis for further independent study and learning of a foreign language. Thus, the formation of educational and strategic competence is an important task for achieving more effective mastery of grammatical competence.

The problem of forming grammatical competence in a foreign language is not new and has been studied by domestic and foreign scientists. The stages of formation of receptive and reproductive grammatical skills were elaborated (N. Sklyarenko, O. Mykhaylova, S. Shaty- lov); developed methods and recommendations for the formation of grammatical skills of various types of speech activity (E. Melnyk, Yu. Passov, O. Vovk, O. Bigich, I. Trygub, S. Nikolayeva, O. Kasatkina, M. Swan, A. Aarts, G. Leech, A. Rossister, A. Hirsh, E. Williams); subsystems and complexes of exercises for the formation of grammatical competence have been created (Yu. Passov, N. Sklyarenko, S. Thornbury, etc.).

Although the problem of the formation of foreign language grammatical competence is already quite well studied, the integrated formation of grammatical competence and educational-strategic competence is a rather new and understudied area. That is why, the relevance of this paper is extremely high.

Aim of the study. The object of research is the process of forming grammatical competence of future teachers.

The subject of the study is the formation of English grammatical competence of future teachers using educational strategies.

The purpose of the article is the theoretical and methodical substantiation of the formation of English grammatical competence of future teachers using educational strategies.

The main tasks of the article are:

research of the structure and features of the formation of grammatical competence of future teachers;

determine the problems of forming the grammatical competence pf future teachers;

explore educational strategies;

investigate the use of educational strategies as auxiliary means of forming English grammatical competence.

Research methods. To solve the tasks of our research, we used theoretical methods - study of the requirements of the professional English Language Program, analysis of methodological and scientific literature, observation of studying process of the 1-st year future teachers at KNUTD; practical method - conversation with the 1 -st year future teachers.

Research material and results. In today's realities of the education system, one of the leading directions for the development of the linguistic personality of future specialists in mastering the English language consists in giving priority in the organic combination of the content of foreign language learning, the latest technologies, orientation to generalization, systematization and deepening of knowledge, stimulation to independent acquisition of knowledge and skills, development of both intellectual and creative abilities, search for own trajectories and strategies in education and successful selfrealization.

It is valuable to understand that, first of all, when learning English, the main task is communicative orientation. However, with the need to develop communicative competence, there is also a need to develop grammatical competence.

Grammatical competence is a person's ability to grammatically correct statements both in oral and written discourse and to understand its grammatical design. Grammatical competence consists of three components:

grammatical knowledge; 2) grammatical skills and 3) grammatical awareness.

Grammatical competence includes obtaining the following aspects: 1) mastering the morphological, lexical, phonetic, synthetic, orthographic aspect of the language, which are the basis for building and understanding coherent and meaningful statements; 2) ability and skills to use grammatical phenomena in speech situations to solve communicative problems and tasks; 3) mastering grammatical concepts and rules, means of expressing grammatical categories; 4) awareness of stylistic features of a foreign language; 5) understanding of statements and the ability to form one's own discourse, designed according to the grammatical rules of the language [12].

In accurate details the main components of grammatical competence are:

grammatical skills: a) reproductive skills (oral and written speech) - aimed at the selection and design of grammatical structures, based on language norms and their implementation in speech; b) receptive skills (reading and listening) - aimed at understanding and recognizing grammatical structures;

grammatical knowledge - knowledge of the language structure;

grammatical awareness - a person's ability to reflect the processes of forming grammatical competence, conscious registration and recognition of these structures, taking into account their peculiarities and regularities; the ability to introspect [8, 57].

Grammatical material is the basis for acquiring grammatical knowledge. But since the English language includes a large number of grammatical phenomena, the education system provides for mastering a specially selected grammatical minimum - active and passive. The active grammatical minimum includes grammatical structures that future specialists use to express their thoughts in oral and written discourse. The passive one involves knowledge of grammatical structures that may not be used to express one's own thoughts, but they are the basis for perceiving and understanding speech during reading or listening [8, 57; 11, 243].

Formation of grammatical competence in higher education institutions in Ukraine takes place according to two approaches -- Deductive and Inductive. The deductive approach is based on the explanation of the material from the general to the specific. Thus, first the theory and rules are presented, and only their application is considered on examples. The inductive method, on the contrary, is based on the explanation of the material from specific to more general: first the functions of a certain grammatical phenomenon are revealed to students, and only then its analysis is explained [1].

It follows from the above-mentioned information that the formation of grammatical competence is a complex and long process that requires a combination of different methods of learning. The success of forming grammatical competence lies in systematic and purposeful work with grammatical material, combining it with various exercises, tasks and strategies.

It's futile to deny, at various stages of the formation of grammatical competence of a foreign language, future teachers may have difficulties. From the point of view of psycholinguistics and age psychologists, the question of the relationship between individual, age and typological characteristics and the relationships between them become important. A peculiar combination of these aspects can start the basis for a person's mental development and a stimulus for the development of new abilities in the variety academic disciplines, including in foreign languages [4].

18-year-old students' experience changes, their verbal memory also changes, the ability to establish cause- and-effect relationships appears, the role of figurative meaningful memorization and creative thinking increases and speech mental activity develops.

At this age of students, psychologists single out the following qualitative changes in their psychological activity: memory is characterized by the dominance of its verbal and logical function; involuntary memory mainly covers the needs and interests of the 1-st-year students.

In addition to the psychological aspects related to the development of the personality of students on the 1-st-year studying at higher educational institution, their difficulties in mastering grammatical competence can be also singled out.

Such difficulties are due to: 1) individual characteristics of students (the lack of a base for revealing the patterns of grammatical phenomena of a foreign language, learning a foreign language is not a vital necessity for the 1-st-year students, making additional efforts to learn a foreign language is not yet sufficiently motivated); 2) the foreign language being studied (interference with the native language, differences in grammatical phenomena of the native and foreign languages, morphological aspects of the foreign language); 3) learning conditions (asynchrony of native and foreign language curricula, incorrectly selected schemes, tables and exercises).

Therefore, the formation of grammatical competence is a complex process that is accompanied by difficulties. Analyzing them, tutor can choose or develop teaching methods and teaching strategies aimed at overcoming studying problems and motivating students to educational process.

Based on our own pedagogical experience and observation of future teachers of the 1-st-year studying, we can come to the conclusion that they use not always effective means for learning grammar. Hence, educational strategies can be useful for solving difficulties of forming grammatical competence.

It is undeniable that the term “strategy” first entered methodological terminology in early 1970s. It arose based on the “student-centered-approach” and was proposed by the American sociolinguist Joan Rubin. While observing students' language learning activities, she concluded that the most successful students use certain learning / educational strategies.

Learning / educational strategies became the definite direction of research in the middle of 1980s. It was the cognitive psychology that impacted the development of that problem at that time.

Purposeful implementation of learning / educational strategies by tutor fulfills the rising independent work of students, the rising thoughts activation and personal orientation to the problem. There are many learning strategies in education sphere. Therefore, educational process can be much easier when tutors and students are aware about its using and can change and implement those from a variety of them, which are the most appropriate.

But there are no accurate definitions of “strategies of foreign language studying” nowadays. Hence, there are many different approaches to solve this subject by modern scientists.

According to the earlier definition after J. Rubin, the strategies are “the means of learning methods, which are implemented by students in their knowledge obtaining” [5].

Chamot supposed, that learning strategies were “aware actions and thoughts of student, which were aimed at achieving the educational goal” [4].

Resumed the thoughts of W. Edmondson and J. House, O. Malukhyn states, that the learning / educational strategies are “the means of educational activities, implemented by student and aimed at obtaining the learning material in the best way. These strategies can include subject actions, connected with accurate educational material, and can also include mental actions, that provided emerging of educational material effectively and accomplished with cognitive skills development” [7, 121].

The above-mentioned scientists outlined three main classes of learning / educational strategies. They are the following: 1) metacognitive - the strategies, directed by subject of learning on planning, organization and control his / her learning activities and on analysis his / her own achievements; 2) cognitive - aimed aware strategies, directed on stating the rules of forming and using of grammatical phenomenon, revising of learning material for better memory, learning by heart the terms and making analogs; 3) socio-affective - the strategies, directed on interaction and exchange of information (group work, team solving of problems, consultations with tutor, etc.).

R. Oxford considered that learning strategies embrace actions methods and different means of thinking, that influence on subject obtaining and trimming of information [9; 10]. She outlined the direct and indirect learning strategies.

According to her points of view, the direct strategies include:

strategies of memorizing: visual and audio material, physical actions, association connections;

cognitive strategies: analysis, reception, production and practical aspect;

compensatory strategies: implementing the native language to overcome the difficulties in foreign language learning; gestures.

The indirect strategies mean:

metacognitive strategies: student's self-assessment, defining the goal of studying, planning and organization of educational process;

emotional strategies: positive position, control over emotional stage, falling alarm-feelings, self-motivation;

social strategies: mutual understanding in collective of students, development of empathy, work in a team, ability to ask for help.

Hence, we can make the conclusion that learning strategies rise the independence of students in their studying, rise the role of tutor in forming the awareness of students about learning / educational strategies, which can be implemented through their life-time.

Thus, students must be well-motivated to use such learning / educational strategies aimed at their personal systematic and concentrated activities in studying to achieve positive results and successful long-life education. For successful implementation of learning / educational strategies in educational process, it is necessary to take into account the individual-psychological peculiarities of students and to stimulate their creative and cognitive development.

The scientific research of modern scientific works creates the concept base for forming the English language grammatical competence strategies:

The process of forming the English language grammatical competence is organized as the model of real communication;

The formation of the English language grammatical competence is implemented in the speaking communication of students;

The process of the English language grammatical competence formation stimulates the mental-communicative activity of the students;

This formation means the creation of authentic conditions of educational process;

The process takes into account the student's individual cognitive styles and learning strategies;

It is implemented in the frame of communicative competence formation;

This process means the formation of language students' personalities;

The English language grammatical competence formation must state the common student's “world picture” phenomenon [12].

Conclusion

From the above-mentioned information we can make the conclusion. Modern strategy of formation the English language grammatical competence means obtaining the English language in the process of real communication, taking into account students' styles of learning, formation of language personality of the student, using authentic teaching and training materials, using problem language-cognitive tasks, providing communicative and cognitive students' development.

In this article we explored the content, structure and peculiarities of formation of the English language grammatical competence of future teachers. We outlined the definitions of grammatical competence, its aspects. We defined the difficulties of the grammatical competence forming in modern conditions at higher educational institutions in Ukraine. There were the terms of “learning / educational strategies” and stated the different classifications of such strategies and meant their role in modern educational process.

The perspective of the following work we see in highlighting all mentioned language knowledge in the process of formation of the English language grammatical competence of philologists-translators.

References

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