На современном этапе развития методики преподавания иностранных языков коммуникативное обучение в том или ином его воплощении является самым распространенным. Основной целью преподавания иностранных языков является развитие иноязычной коммуникативной компетенции, формирование языковой личности, способной к межкультурному общению. Выдвижение данных целей повлияло и на отбор содержания обучения иностранным языкам, и на методическую наполняемость уроков.
Одной из главных особенностей, присущих уроку в рамках коммуникативного обучения, является его речевая направленность. Это значит, что создаваемые ситуации общения, а также все речевые продукты (устные и письменные), производимые на уроках, должны иметь место в реальной действительности. Наверное, в условиях реального общения, русскому человеку никогда не придётся рассказывать на иностранном языке об истории и географическом положении какой-либо страны, произносить монолог о роли телевидения в его жизни, либо описывать свою внешность перед собеседником. Тогда перед преподавателями встаёт вопрос: что следует предпринять, чтобы подобные речевые произведения хотя бы условно напоминали реальное общение, были личностно значимыми для обучающегося, способствовали формированию положительной мотивации к изучению иностранного языка.[1]
Данная статья имеет своей целью познакомить преподавателей с материалами, которые помогут создать ситуации реального общения и положительную мотивацию в рамках изучения темы “Описание человека” (“Describing a person”).
Безусловно, одним из самых действенных средств поддержания мотивации в процессе учения, является игра. Приложение 1
I. Games.
1. Domino game-1
Aim: to play a game matching character adjectives with verbal descriptions.
Language: character adjectives
Materials: one copy of the worksheet cut per group of two-four students.
- In pairs or in groups of four, students sit round a small table is possible. Give out one set of dominoes to each group and get students to shuffle them and deal them all out. Students should try to have their dominoes in front of them so that they can see them but others can’t.
- The youngest (the tallest, a student with the longest hair etc.) starts by placing a domino in the middle of the table. Then the student on his/her left tries to put another domino either in front of or behind the first one to match an adjective with the person’s description. When he/she has done so, or none of his/her dominoes fit, the next player has a try.
- Students continue placing dominoes on the table until one student has no dominoes left and so has won.
Dominoes: see Supplement 1.
2. Domino game-2
Aim: to play a game matching opposite adjectives.
Language: character adjectives, negative prefixes un-, im- ,in-, ir.
Materials: one copy of the worksheet cut per group of two-four students.
Dominoes: see Supplement 1.
3. Describing people 20 questions
Aim: to guess a celebrity
Language: Yes/no questions, adjectives describing appearance
Materials: photos
Students ask yes/no questions about the people whose photos or written descriptions they have (“Is it a woman?” “Does she have long hair?” “Does she have a high pressure job’”) until they guess which person their partner was thinking of.
4. Describing people memory game.
Aim: to test students` memory
Language: Questions, appearance topical vocabulary, clothes topical vocabulary.
Students test each other on what people in class look like and are wearing while the person answering the questions has their eyes closed.
For example, ‘What colour are my eyes?’
‘What colour is the skirt I’m wearing?’
5. Ranking traits.
Aim: to rank personality words
Language: Jobs. Adjectives describing character. Expressing opinions. Agreeing and disagreeing
Students rank personality words by how important they are for a particular job. Other groups then guess what the job is from the ranking and then say if they agree or disagree.
6. Alibi game.
Aim: to create an alibi story.
Language:
Describing a place/ a person. QuestionsEach pair of students is told that they are a suspect for a murder last night and that person’s alibi, and must construct a story about what they were wearing, what the people around them looked like etc when they were at the cafe rather than at the scene of the crime at the time of the murder. The two people are then questioned separately on all the details, and the pair in the class with most inconsistencies between their stories are the guilty ones.
7. Project/research
Aim: to describe a famous person.
Language: describing a person.
Students are set a task to find out as many things about a famous person as they can. They get points either for the number of details they found, or for every detail they found that no one else did.
8. Jigsaws.
Aim: to put together a jigsaw puzzle.
Language: describing a person.
Materials: magazine pictures cut up into pieces.
Students are given different parts of a cut up picture or pictures showing many different people, and have to match the pictures up without showing them to each other.
9. Magazine search.
Aim: to find a picture in a magazine
Students challenge each other to find people of a certain kind in the magazines or textbooks that they have (e.g. “Look for someone wearing a blue hat/with a six pack”), and then race to be the first to find that thing. This works with different people having both the same and different books, but if they have different publications you might want to allow them to swap occasionally.
10. Guess the nationality.
Aim: to guess nationalities.
Language:
describing a character, national stereotypesPeople describe one person or make generalizations about someone from a particular country, and the others try to guess the nationality. You can do the same thing with regions of their country. This can lead onto language of generalization such as “Most people think that…” or “People in this country tend to…” which is good for speaking exams such as IELTS, or discussion of the truth and acceptability of stereotypes.
11. Famous couples.
Aim: to find a partner.
Language: describing a person
Materials: role cards.
Each student is pinned a name card on his/her clothes so that they can’t see it (e.g. on their backs). Moving around the class students try to describe people whose names are on the cards to let everybody guess who he/she is. It’s not allowed to pronounce the names. After a student has guessed his/her name (according to the card) he/she should find a partner.
Role cards: see Supplement 1.
II. Real life situations for the language of describing people.
1. Meeting someone at the airport/ meeting someone for a blind date
This can be reproduced by students writing emails describing themselves, but putting fake names or numbers instead of their real names. Students then read one of the emails and as quickly as possible go up to someone and say “Are you number 1/Joe?” and get one point for each right guess but lose one point for each wrong guess. The person with most points after 5 minutes is the winner. Alternatively, do something similar with a picture of an airport full of people or a town square with lots of people waiting.
2. Reading descriptions to find if you want to go on a blind date
For example, “internet dating”. Students can read descriptions of famous people, choose which one sounds best and check it against the photos to see if they made the right choice.
3. Trying to fix someone else up for a blind date
For example, describing a male colleague to a female friend to see if she wants you to arrange for them to “accidentally” meet. To make it into a game, students are given the name and/ or photo one person each and without giving the names or showing the photos, they match up the males and females in the best combination they can. This works best if the people are chosen for their comedic potential, e.g. Hannibal the Cannibal and Queen Elizabeth.
4. Describing a new boyfriend or girlfriend or someone you are interested in to your friends or family
One student does this with a photo or with the description of a famous person (without showing it to the other people or saying the name, and trying to just say good things), and the other students pretend to be the parents or friends, ask questions and say if they approve or disapprove. The student then reveals the photo or name of the famous person, who should be someone obviously attractive or totally unacceptable. Alternatively, people can describe real and imaginary boyfriends and girlfriends, and the others have to guess if they are real or not.
5. Trying to explain which famous person you mean when you can’t remember their name
This can be with people describing until others guess.
6. Deciding which actor is most suitable for each part
If you use a real film or TV series that the students don’t know yet, matching the physical descriptions or photos to the descriptions of the characters’ jobs/ personality etc (but not appearance), you can then watch part of the TV series or movie and find out what the real casting director decided.
7. Describing who you most take after in your family
This can be difficult to turn into real communication in the classroom. One way is for one student to describe their two parents in detail, perhaps in reply to questions, and then the person listening says which parent it sounds like they most take after (or most take after in certain aspects), and check if the person agrees. You can also extend this to grandparents.
8. Writing recruitment ads for jobs that demand particular kinds of appearance
And deciding if writing desirable appearance in job ads is allowable, and if so, for which jobs.
9. Pen friend letters
The problem with this one is that the task tends to be uncommunicative and lack fun- unless a real pen friend is reading it of course! Alternatively, they can exchange pen friend letters and write back to each other, including one untrue detail that their partner has to spot when they read it. A funnier but less realistic variation is to do it as a “chain letter”, where each person writes one line without seeing the previous lines and then hands it to the next person to continue.
10. Suggested birthday presents
As a shop assistant/ shopper roleplay or as friends giving advice. More communication and fun can be added by people not showing pictures of the objects they are recommending or the famous people they are shopping for until after they have made their decisions.[4]
III. Дополнительные возможности использования темы “Описание человека” (из опыта работы).
В процессе изучения темы “Описание человека” можно провести социометрический тест с целью определить участников группы, пользующихся авторитетом. Для получения максимально достоверных результатов необходимо присутствие всех учащихся на уроке.
Материалы: небольшие листы бумаги (их количество можно рассчитать по формуле: х2-x, где х- количество учеников в группе).
Инструкция 1: Вы должны описать каждого ученика из группы. На листочках должны быть указаны ваши имя и фамилия и имя и фамилия того человека, которого вы описываете.
Если в группе большое количество учащихся, то можно сократить время выполнения работы, выдав листы с незаконченными предложениями. Например, (Olga) has got… She seems to be… He/She likes … What I (dis)like in him/her is …
После того, как все работы будут собраны, проводится собственно тестирование.
Инструкция 2: Сейчас вы должны выбрать из ваших одноклассников тех, чьи характеристики, написанные на вас, вы хотели бы прочитать. Можно выбрать трёх учащихся из группы в следующем порядке:
- прочитали бы его/её характеристику в первую очередь,
- прочитали бы, если бы не было характеристики, написанной первым человеком,
- прочитали бы, если бы не было первых двух.
В процессе индивидуального опроса данные записываются в таблицу.
Заполнение социометрической матрицы
| Список Класса |
Список класса | ||||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | |
1 |
1 | 2 | 3 | ||||||
| 2 | 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||||
| 3 | 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||||
| 4 | 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||||
| 5 | 1 | 3 | 2 | ||||||
| 6 | 2 | 1 | 3 | ||||||
| 7 | 2 | 1 | 3 | ||||||
| 8 | 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||||
| 9 | 1 | 3 | 2 | ||||||
| Количество выборов | 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 2 |
| Качествовыборов | 1-2 2-1 |
1-2 2-1 |
1-3 2-1 |
1-2 2-2 |
3-2 | 2-1 3-3 |
2-2 | 3-3 | 2-1 3-1 |
Обработка социометрических данных
После заполнения матрицы, подсчитываете количество полученных выборов и их качество (первые, вторые и третьи места). Например, по данным этой матрицы ученик под № 3 пользуется наибольшим авторитетом в группе, его мнение захотели узнать 4 человека из группы, из них трое поставили его на 1 место. Полученные данные можно использовать в дальнейшей работе, например учитывать их при делении учащихся на микрогруппы.
Литература
- Соловова Е.Н. Методика обучения иностранным языкам. М.: Просвещение, 2006. 239 с.
- Пассов Е.И. Новосельцева Н.В. Лексика? Нет проблем. М.: Иностранный язык. Оникс, 2000.
- Soars Liz&John New Headway Intermediate Student’s book. Oxford University Press, 2004. p.91.
- http://www.tefl.net/.