New methods in teaching foreign language

An old Chineese proverb says: “I have heard-I have forgetten, I have seen- have remembered, I have done- I know”. Therefore, in foreign language, teaching the main thing is to involve all the pupils in activities and exersices, but for it we need some good planning principles. The two main problems between two daily planning are variety and flexibility. Variety means involving pupils in a number of different types of activities and introducing them to a wide selection of materials. It meansplanning sothat learning is interesting and never monatenous for pupils. Flexibility comeswhen the teacher has to change the plan in particular situation. I want to speak about some hints for lesson managment.

1. Prepare more than you need. It is advisable to prepare an easy activity, ready in case of extra time.
2. Make sure you’re aware of how the time is going relatively to your programme
3. Do not leave the home task to the last moment. At the end of the lesson, the learner’s atention is at the lowest level and you may run out of time before you finish explaining. Explain it earlier and then give a quick reminder at the end. Write your homework on the blackboard.
4. If you have papers to distribute to a large class, do not try to give every paper yourself to every student.
5. If you are doing group work, give instructions and make sure these are understood before handing out materials.

I want to mention some types of the lessons that are more resultful in foreign language teaching.

Fantasy lesson. Pupils sit in a circle, make up a story according to the theme, and draw a picture to it.

Integral lesson. Pupils are given the words, which have been taken from English dictionary and try to explain their meaning by finding synonyms or using them in the context. This activity gives an opportunity to students to show their skills in language learning.

In planning daily lessons, I try to use different activities and exercises. Zhaunbay Karaev’s level tasks are useful for arising interests in learning. It consists of four levels:

1. Common (pupil’s) level.

At this stage, pupils are given simple and easy tasks, such as:

Fill in the missing letters: weat_er, wh_t, Brit_ in, We_nesday, etc.

These tasks vary according to the students’ level and they help to revise all learned materials

2. Algorithmic level. At this stage, pupils do various tasks, which make students to think a lot. These tasks may include the new grammar structures, which has just been explained or it may be in the form of revising. I prefer such exercises as comparing and choosing the tense forms for 7^th, 8^th grades , making up the sentences in Subjunctive Mood or changing direct speech into indirect speech for 9^th and 10^th grades. There are some examples given below:

Past Perfect or Past Continuous?

Omar had written/ was writing when I came. Jane had cleaned/ was cleaning the room by 6 o’clock. Victor said that he had translated/ was translating the article at that time.

Past Perfect Passive or Past Continuous Passive?

The secretary announced that the letters had been written / were being written at that moment.

The teacher informed that the dictations had been checked / were being checked before the lesson started.

3. Creative level. It is the most interesting stage for pupils, as I have remarked. This level gives them to show their talents and abilities in poetry and drama. E.g. after reading the text, I give to the pupils a task to make up a short poem according to the text they have just read. In this case, I give them a structure to which they will refer:

Some of the pupils made up such poems: A red fox,

Was sitting in a box
It was so clever,
Eat hares never or
I have a fox,
It is a toy in the box.
I think it is very clever,
I will leave it alone never.

May be in some cases it will be alike more to nonsense than to poems, but it helps a lot in practicing the vocabulary and grammar.

The last level is search level. It involves students into research works and projects. For example, by finding the neutral words in the text a pupil may become interested in the formation of neutral words, such as flight attendant instead of stuardess , shop assistant instead of sales woman, so on. But this level can not be done during the lesson, as it needs much time.

John Sores’ method of critical thinking is very useful in teaching foreign language. I always use “Group strategy”, “Have learnt strategy” and Venn diagram. Let us take one of the lessons from home reading. The text is about wild animals, especially wolves.

1. “Group strategy”. What can you say when you hear the word “wild animal wolf”?

2. Presenting the new words by means of pictures, translation, synonyms and jestures.

3. Reading the text about the wolf. Answering questions.

4. “Have learnt” strategy. What did you know about wolves before reading the text? What have you learnt from the text? What do you want know further?

What are you interested in?

There are some possible answers of pupils:

I know that wolves live in forests; they are meat-eating animal.

I have learnt from the text that wolves try not to attack the sheep of neighbor farms.

I want to know about their habitat and ways of living, why they are called “the sanitary of the nature”.

Then students draw a diagram about differences and similarities of wolves and dogs.

Sometimes I give them a task to make their own album of animals and plants. They must write stories using the new words and word combinations. The result of this task will astonish you because everyone tries to make his book or album better than others do.

They will find a lot of new information and share it with their classmates. These albums and books will help you next year in explaining this theme to the next grade.

The next interesting activity for pupils is making a project work on the theme. For example, in the sixth form the pupils had studied a unit connected with education and schools. At the last lesson, they prepared the project “My Ideal School”. They drew the pictures of their dream schools and wrote descriptions for them. The result was exciting, though they were the sixth form pupils; they had so big ideas and plans. Their dream schools were great and even I wanted to be accepted to these schools as pupil or work at them as a teacher.

Children are our treasure, our future, and, we, teachers, must bring up them with great sense of love for Mother-earth and nature. The great Kazakh scholar and teacher Ahmet Baitursunov said: “The education must be given with up-bringing, because the education given without up-bringing is dangerous for society”.

At the end, I want to say that wherever we are, whatever we teach, we must remember one thipg: we must bring up a deep love for humanity in our children .

With great love from Kazakhstan, Iskendirova Saniya Amanzholkizi.