Experimental investigation of teen-agers' attention as a factor of successful english language mastering

Mahdalyna Lyla

At the beginning of information perception the stability of attention is higher then at the end of it. Increasing mistakes in perception of informational signals and appearing of tiredness testify about it, as showed the investigations of D. P .Bilous, V. S. Kompanets and others.

O.V Skrypchenko noted that specific role of attention is reflected not only in mechanism of recognizing, but in the purpose of educational perception as well. The role of attention in motive component formation is partially established, mostly in a theoretical aspect. In motive component formation the educational activity of a schoolchild, that is his learning, is very important. It can be connected, as Pieron and others think, with the internal organization of the individual and with his/her relation to his/her needs.

At this time, it is necessary to take into account, as O.V Skrypchenko pointed, that available in child are not only biogenetic, but psychogenetic and sociogenetic needs. The effectiveness of education will depend from the fact of existed information becomming as the leading object of attention in educational activity. By this, it is important to mention that for a schoolchild the object of attention can be not only one of surrounding objects in a class, but imaginary also. In such cases the teacher can think about studen's concenrating at his information, while in reality the attention has been already concentrated on the imaginary object connected with his needs.

Determination of the role of attention in the operational component of activity was theoretically grounded by M. F. Dobrynin, but O.V Skrypchenko considers, that it will be better to find out experimentally the role of attention in appearing of the task of subject as a result of the analysis of problematic situation; in association appearing connected with a content and structure of a task; eliminating of associations; appearing of the hypothesis and plan of solving the task; checking of the hypothesis; getting obtain more specific information, conforming or negating the results.

It is very important to learn the role of attention in providing by a subject the motor, perceptive, mental, imeginative, willing and other actions. We have in the scientific literature some datas about the role of attention in abilities and skills formation, but this is important for the specifics of educational activity which includes such abilities and skills. There is much air in the investigating of the role of attention in operational components of the activity of a teacher. Here it is possible to search not only common things, but the distinctive also, which are substatiated by methods and ways of education. It is possible to think that on the level of ability formation a correlative connection exists between the quickness and exactness of actions performing. It will change step by step, in transition from ability to a skill, where the actions become automatized and their performing is under the control of consciousness.

The place of attention in communicative component of education is substantiated by its role in communication with a teacher or other school mates and a teacher with a pupil and a class etc. In works of V V. Vlasenko there are hypotheses connected with a place of attention in the mechanism of communication in the system teacher-pupil, pupil-teacher, teacher-pupils etc.

The important datas about the state of attention in oral questioning have got I. V. Strahov, T.A.Korman, A.S.Borondulina, N. V. Lavrova, T. S. Smirnova and others. But, the role of attention according to the other forms of the knowledge control in schoolchildren isn't investigated enough. We can find in scientific literature the theoretical basis of the role of attention in educational activity. It can become the essential in providing the concrete experimental researches in which the place of attention in educational activity of a child and a teacher as well will open. But, we must constant the fact, that the general theory of attention in the educational activity is absent. We didn't put the task to check the state of the development of the volume of attention in teen-agers and check the conclusions of the former researchers.

The aim of the study is to analyze the scientific literature which touches the problems of the development of attention, its volume and kinds; to learn the psychological points of view concerning the investigations of attention in the process of educational activity; to generalize the researchers' thoughts and to point out the peculiarities of the influence of attention on the school successfulness in English language mastering.

Materials and methods. For solving the tasks we put we used approbated methodics of the volume of attention diagnostics. We`ll describe them with some little changes conditioned by the age of children.

The first methodic, which we used was a corrective one. The index of the capacity for work was taken the stableness of individual's attention, which we determined with a help of a corrective test. It included the material of the table of Burdon (variant B). The table consisted of thirty raws and thirty letters in each of them, but only eight letters were used. The teen-agers worked with it writing out the letter “k” in all cases, but when “i” stood before it they didn't do that. We gave them four minutes to do the task. Then we sumed up the mistakes and according to the formular A=V: m+1 times 100 (A-attention, V-rapidness, m-quantity of mistakes) we determined the level of the stableness of attention.

In the second methodic, as changed variant of others, the volume of attention was researched with a help of cards, on which ten words were written. It was necessary to put them in alphabet order. The test was done twice.

The third methodic was directed on the determination of language attention and consisted of two tests. Firstly, we determined language hearing attention. It was listening of ten separate syllables with the next their distinguishing among others. The schoolchildren got the cards with twenty five syllables and tried to find those ten they heard. Near every syllable they put “+” or “-“ in dependence of their recognizing. For example,

The second test determined language visual attention. It consists in reading of ten separate syllables with the next their distinguishing among others on the next card. The material for this task was like a previous one.

For foreign language mastering the great significance has a level of the development of auditive (hearing) and visual attention, which depends on the development of correspondant receptor. Because language visual attention is closely connected with a written speech and language hearing attention with the oral one, without a fixed hearing attention it is impossible to learn the children to hear the foreign language and without a visual one - to see all the peculiarities of it. Presence of receptional attention raise the perceptiveness of the organs of perception, speed up the process of perception, stipulate the clarity and exactness in reflecting the things.

Results

Results of these tests allow making a conclusion of what attention is better developed: language hearing or language visual. There were children with the same level of these kinds development.

The authors of these methodics prove that all these methodics give the chance to diagnose the volume of attention. Some of them consider that by one and the same methodic can be put the diagnosis of the volume of attention and its distribution or stability. For determining the individual distinguishes was determined the middle index according to the age of children.

language learning deviation attention

Table 1

Deviations from the middle indexes which diagnosed the age of schoolchildren

As we see from the table, the middle indexes of the deviation and also the coeficients of variation of dianostics of the individual distiguishes of the age of schoolchildren of seven- nine classes got narrow from 2,32 % to 1,78 %, and then widen to 2,06 %.

Deviations from the middle indexes which diagnosed the language visual attention of schoolchildren

The results of the investigation show that the measure of individual distinguishes for the index of language visual attention reduces.