Формирование грамматических навыков на начальном этапе обучения иностранному языку

                                     Introduction.

   Language is the chief means by which the human personality expresses itself and fulfills its basic need for social interaction with other persons.

   The aim of the foreign language is primary schools is to develop pupils` skills and understanding English speech and participating in conversation based on the topics covered.

   Robert Lado wrote that language functions owing to the language skills. A person who knows a language perfectly uses a thousand and one grammar lexical, phonetic rules when he is speaking. Language skills help us to choose different words and models in our speech.

   In my diploma paper I examine the forming of grammar skills. Grammar is known to be an important component of the language as a system. Communicative skills without regular using grammar are limited.

   It is clear that the term “grammar” has meant various things at various times and sometimes several things at one time. This plurality of meaning is characteristic of the present time and is the source of confusions in the discussion of grammar as part of the education of children. There have been taking place violent disputes on the subject of teaching grammar at school.

   The ability to talk about the grammar of a language, to recite its rules, is also very different from ability to speak and understand a language or to read and write it. Those who can use a language are often unable to recite its rules, and those who can recite its rules can be unable to use it. Nowadays we can hear the following opinions among teachers of foreign language: One teacher says,   “ I do not favor teaching any grammar before the fifth grade, and not much then,” another is likely to reply, “But if you do not, how will your students learn to capitalize correctly, to punctuate sentences, or to spell accurately?” Another teacher remarks,

“If you teach no grammar, how can you expect to have correct usage in speech and writing?”

   In the elementary grades the major emphasis will be upon the actual use, rather than upon knowledge of the language itself and attention to restrictive rules. Grammar of the analytical and structural sort will have little place or no place in the elementary grades, but the oral and written conventions of English, those which function in actual speaking and writing, will be of chief concern.

   Grammar organizes the vocabulary and as a result we have sense units. There is a system of stereotypes, which organizes words into sentences. But what skill does grammar develop?

   First of all it gives the ability to make up sentences correctly, to reproduce the text adequately. (the development of practical skills and habits)

-         The knowledge of the specific grammar structure helps pupils point out the differences between the mother tongue and the target language.

-         The knowledge of grammar develops abilities to abstract systematize plural facts.

   Examining the problem of grammar skills we must acquire how they are defined in literature. We must differentiate their kinds, features, and the conditions under which they are formed, the steps of forming grammar skills, and the grammar minimum for the primary school.

 Learning grammar and forming grammar skills are important tasks of the subject “Foreign language” at the primary school. It is necessary for children not to make grammar mistakes. Roberto Lado wrote that a mistake is the wrong skill the aim of my diploma paper is to prevent children from making grammar mistakes, i.e. to form grammar skills. I think that the best way to form grammar skills is to use a lot of training exercises and individual approach in teaching grammar.

                                                                           Language.

To judge by the way some people speak, there is no place for grammar in the language course nowadays; yet it is, in reality, as important as it ever was exercise of correct grammar, if he is to attain any skill of effective use of the language, but he need not know consciously formulated rules to account to him for that he does unconsciously correctly.

   In order to understand a language and to express oneself correctly one must assimilate the grammar mechanism of the language studied. Indeed, one may know all the words in a sentence and yet fail to understand it, if one does not see the relation between the words in the given sentence. And vice versa, a sentence may contain one, two, and more in known words but if one has a good knowledge of the structure of the language one can easily guess the meaning of these words or at least find them in a dictionary.

   No speaking is possible without the knowledge of grammar, without the forming of a grammar mechanism.

If learner has acquired such a mechanism, he can produce correct sentences in a foreign language. Paul Roberts writes: “ Grammar is something that produces the sentences of a language. By something we mean a speaker of English. If you speak English natively, you have built into you rules of English grammar. In a sense, you are an English grammar. You possess, as an essential part of your being, a very complicated apparatus which enables you to produce infinitely many sentences, all English ones, including many that you have never specifically learned. Furthermore by applying you rule you can easily tell whether a sentence that you hear a grammatical English sentence or not.” *¹

   A command of English as is envisaged by the school syllabus cannot be ensured without the study of grammar . Pupils need grammar to be able to aud, speak, read, and write in the target language.

                A Brief Review Of The Major Methods

                 Of Foreign Language Teaching.

The grammatical systems of Russian and English are fundamentally different. English is an analytical language, in which grammatical meaning in largely expressed through the use of additional words and by changes in word order. Russian is a synthetic language, in which the majority of grammatical forms are created  through changes in the structure of words, by means of a developed system of prefixes, suffixes and ending. ( p. 121,

Brown C. and Jule “Teaching the spoken language”, Cambridge, 1983)

   No one knows exactly how people learn languages although a great deal of research has been done into the subject.

   Many methods have been proposed for the teaching of foreign language. And they have met with varying degrees of success and failure.

   We should know that the method by which children are taught must have some effect on their motivation. If they find it deadly boring they will probably become de-motivated, whereas if they have confidence in the method they will find it motivating. Child learners differ from adult learners in many ways. Children are curious, their attention is of a shorter duration, they are quite differently motivated in, their interests are less specialized. They need frequent of activity; they need activities which are exciting and stimulating their curiosity; they need to be involved in something active.

   We shall examine such methods as “The Grammar – Translation Method”, ”The Direct Method”, “The Audio-lingual Method”. And we pay attention to the teaching grammar of the foreign language. We shall comment those methods, which have had a long history.

   The Grammar Translation method will be discussed.

   This method was widely used in teaching the classics, namely Latin, and it was transferred to the teaching of modern languages when they were introduced into schools

   The grammar-translation method is largely discredited today. With greater interest in modern languages for communication the inadequacy of grammar-translation methods became evident.

                            The Direct Method.

   The Direct Method appeared as a reaction against the grammar-translation method.

   There was a movement in Europe that emphasized language learning by direct contact with the foreign language in meaningful situations. This movement resulted in various individual methods with various names, such as new method, natural method, and even oral method, but they can all be referred to as direct methods or the direct method. In addition to emphasizing direct contact with the foreign language, the direct method usually deemphasized or eliminated translation and the memorization of conjugations, declensions, and rules, and in some cases it introduced phonetics and phonetic transcription.

   The direct method assumed that learning a foreign language is the same as learning the mother tongue, that is, that exposing the student directly to the foreign language impresses it perfectly upon his mind. This is true only up to a point, since the psychology of learning a second language differs from that of learning the first. The child is forced to learn the first language because he has no other effective way to express his wants. In learning a second language this compulsion is largely missing, since the student knows that he can communicate through his native language when necessary.

Method:

   The Direct Method enjoyed considerable popularity through the end of nineteenth century and well into this one.

          Now we shall discuss “The Audiolingual Method”.

The Audiolingual Method (It is also called Mimicry-memorization method) was the method developed in the Intensive Language Program. It was successful because of high motivation, intensive practice, small classes, and good models, in addition to linguistically sophisticated descriptions of the foreign language and its grammar.

 Grammar explanations as used in the major methods.

   We shall briefly review the treatment of grammatical explanations by some of the major methods. This is not meant to be an exhaustive study of all available methods; rather it is an attempt to show the variety of ways in which different methods deal with grammar explanations and may help teachers in evaluating available materials.

1.   Grammar translation is associated with formal rule statement. Learning proceeds, deductively, and the rule is generally stated by the teacher, in a textbook, or both. Traditional abstract grammatical terminology is used. Drills include translation into native language.

2.   The direct method is characterized by meaningful practice and exclusion of the mother tongue. This method has had many interpretations, some of which include an analysis of structure, but generally without the use of abstract grammatical terminology.

3.  

   Each method is realized in techniques. By a technique we mean an individual way in doing something, in gaining a certain goal in teaching learning process. The method and techniques the teacher should use in teaching children  of the primary school is the direct method, and various techniques which can develop pupils` listening comprehension and speaking. Pupils are given various exercises, connected with the situational use of words and sentence patterns.

                Teaching grammar patterns.

   We’ll examine "Teaching Grammatical Patterns" by Robert Lado (Chapter 10 "From Sentences to Patterns")

   Robert Lado thinks that even children who have never studied the rules grammar make use of the grammar of the language. This is seen in the mistakes they make. When a child says, He goed, he is forming a "regular" preterite on the pattern: showed, weighed, served: "goed." His error reveals the fact that he has been applying the pattern even though he is not able to describe it.

Patterns and Sentences

   A grammatical pattern is an arrangement of parts having linguistic significance beyond the sum of its parts. The parts of a pattern are expressed by words or classes of words so that different sentences often express the same pattern. All the sentences of a language arc cast in its patterns.

    John telephoned, The boy studied.

   We understood are different sentences expressing the same statement pattern in English.

   A pattern is not a sentence, however. Sentences express patterns. Each sentence illustrates a pattern. To memorize a sentence does not imply that a pattern has been memorized. There can be countless sentences, each unique, yet all constructed on the same pattern.

Patterns and Grammar   

   Children learn the grammatical patterns of their language before they study grammar in school. When a child says goed instead of went or knowed instead of knew, he is applying the regular preterite pattern on the analogy,

              open: opened = go: goed

Patterns arc learned in childhood. Adults no longer have to learn new patterns; they learn new words that are used in old patterns. That the old patterns are alive is shown by putting unknown words and phrases into them.

   And what is the role of the native language in learning the patterns of a foreign language?

Native Language Factor

   The most important factor determining ease and difficulty in learning the patterns of a foreign language is their similarity to or difference from the patterns of the native language. When the pattern in the target language is parallel to one in the native language, the student merely learns new words which he puts into what amounts to an extended use of his native pattern. Since his word learning capacity is not lost, he makes rapid progress. When, however, the native language pattern does not parallel that of the target language, the student tends to revert to his native language patterns through habit.

Grading the Patterns

   There is no single grading scale for teaching the patterns of a foreign language. Any systematic cumulative progression, taking into account the structures that are difficult, would be satisfactory from a linguistic point of view.

Pattern-practice

   Approach The mimicry-memorization exercise tends to give the same amounts of practice to easy as well as difficult problems. It also concentrates unduly on the memorization of specific sentences, and not enough on the manipulation of the patterns of sentences in a variety of content situations. For those patterns that arc functionally parallel to the native language, very little work needs to be done, and very little or no explanation is necessary. On the other hand, for those patterns that are not parallel in the two languages, more specific understanding of the grammatical structure points at issue is needed while the sentences are learned and not before or after. And more practice with the pattern is necessary before it is learned, that is, used without

attention to its structure.

   Basic sentences

The memorization of sample sentences that con­tain the grammatical problems to he mastered is common to both pattern practice and mimicry-memorization. For this practice there is ample justification in linguistics and in psychology. The utterances have to become readily available if the student is to use them in the rapid sequence of conversation.

Teaching the patterns

   A sentence can be learned as a single unstructured unit like a word, but this is only the beginning. The stu­dent must acquire the habit of constructing sentences in the patterns of the target language. For this he must be able to put words almost automatically into a pattern without changing it, or to change it by making the necessary adjustments.

Teaching a. problem pattern begins with teaching the specific struc­ture points where a formal change in the pattern is crucial and where the student is not able to manipulate the required changes. The steps in teaching problem patterns are (1) attention pointer, usually a single sentence calling the students' attention to the point at issue; (2) ex­amples, usually minimally contrastive examples showing a pair of sen­tences that differ only on the point or points being made; (3) repetition by the class and presentation of additional examples of the same contrast;

(4) comments or generalization elicited inductively from the students and confirmed by the teacher; (5) practice, with attention on the problem being taught.

   These steps an intended to clarify the crucial point of contrast at the time when sentences are being learned. They should take only a small portion of the class time—no more than 15 per cent.

   Robert Lado accents that many teachers make the mistake of trying to explain everything at length while the class listens passively.  Long explanations without active practice arc a waste of time, and even with    practice they are inefficient. Most of the class should be devoted to practice. The following are brief descriptions of some of the more effective types of exercises.      

     The more effective types of exercises according to R.Lado:

·        Listening

It is understood that the student does not invent the target language.  He  must listen to good models. Random listening helps, but selective listening following instructions is more effective. Listening is assumed to he most effective when it is in preparation for speaking.                                      

Listening can be combined with other activities.

·        Oral repetition In this practice the student repeats the pattern sentences provided orally by the model. This is the most basic and important of all exercises. It begins with the presentation of the very first sentence of the pattern, the basic sentence, and continues through all other examples of the pattern taught for speaking.

·        Oral substitution Once the student can speak the basic sentence by repetition, oral substitution becomes the most useful and powerful drill available to practice the pattern. It is fast, flexible, and versatile, and it approximates conversational use of the language. Several variations are described for the reader: simple substitution, substitution in variable position, substitution that forces a change, substitution requiring a change, and multiple substitution.

·        Transformation

·        Speech practice and etc.

 The Psychological characteristics of grammar skills.

To develop one’s speech means to acquire essential patterns of speech, and grammar patterns in particular. Children must use these items automatically during speech-practice. The automatic use of grammar items in our speech (oral and written) supposes mastering some particular skills – the skills of using grammar items to express one’s own thoughts,in other words to make up your sentences.

   We must get so-called  reproductive or active  grammar skills.

   A skill is treated as  an automatic part of awareness. Automatization of the action is the main feature of a skill.

The nature of automatization is characterized by that psychological structure of the action which adopts to the conditions of performing the action owing frequent experience. The action becomes more frequent, correct and accurate and the number of the operations is shortened while forming the skill the character of awareness of the action is changing, i.e. fullness of understanding is paid to the conditions and quality of performing to the control over it and regulation.

   To form some skills is necessary to know that the process of the forming skills has some steps:

1.   Only some definite elements of the action are automatic.

2.   The automatization occurs under more difficult conditions, when the child can’t concentrate his attention on one element of the action.

3.   The whole structure of the action is improved and the automatization of its separate components is completed.

   What features do the productive grammar skills have?

   During our speech the reproductive grammar skills are formed together with lexics and intonation, they must express the speakers intentions.

   The actions in the structural setting of the lexics must be learnt.

The  characteristic feature of the reproductive grammar skills is their flexibility. It doesn`t depend on the level of automatization, i.e. on perfection of skill here mean the original action: both the structure of sentence, and forms of the words are reproduced by the speaker using different lexical material. If the child reproduces sentences and different words, which have been learnt by him as “a ready-made thing” he can say that there is no grammar skill. Learning the ready-made forms, word combinations and sentences occurs in the same way as learning lexics.

   The grammar skill is based on the general conclusion. The grammar action can and must occur only in the definite lexical limits, on the definite lexical material. If the pupil can make up his sentence frequently, accurately and correctly from the grammatical point of view, he has got the grammar skill.

   Teaching grammar at school using the theoretical knowledge brought some critical and led to confusion. All the grammatical rules were considered to be evil and there were some steps to avoid using them at school.

   But when we learn grammatical items in models we use substitution and such a type of training gets rid of grammar or “neutralize” it. By he way, teaching the skills to make up sentences by analogy is a step on the way of forming grammar skills. It isn’t the lexical approach to grammar and it isn’t neutralization of grammar, but using basic sentences in order to use exercises by analogy and to reduce number of grammar rules when forming the reproductive grammar skills.

   To form the reproductive grammar skills we must follow such steps:

1.   Selection the model of sentence.

2.   Selection the form of the word and образование словоформ.

3.   Selection the auxiliary words-preposition, articles, and etc. and their combination with principle words.

   The main difficulty of the reproductive (active) grammar skills is to correspond the purposes of the statement, communicative approach (a questionèan answer and so on), words, meanings, expressed by the grammatical patterns. In that case we use basic sentences, in order to answer the definite situation.

   The main factor of the forming of the reproductive grammar skill is that pupils need to learn the lexic of the language. They need to learn the meanings of the words and how they are used. We must be sure that our pupils are aware of the vocabulary they need at their level and they can use the words in order to form their own sentence. Each sentence contains a grammar structure. The mastering the grammar skill lets pupils save time and strength, energy, which can give opportunity to create. Learning a number of sentences containing the same grammatical structure and a lot of words containing the same grammatical form isn’t rational.

   But the generalization of the grammar item can relieve the work of the mental activity and let the teacher speed up the work and the children realize creative activities.

   The process of creation is connected with the mastering of some speech stereotypes the grammatical substrat is hidden in basic sentences. Grammar is presented as itself. Such a presentation of grammar has its advantage: the grammar patterns of the basic sentences are connected with each other. But this approach gives pupils the opportunity to realize the grammar item better. The teaching must be based on grammar explanations and grammar rules. Grammar rules are to be understood as a special way of expressing communicative activity. The reproductive grammar skills suppose to master the grammar actions which are necessary for expressing thoughts in oral and written forms.

   The automatic perception of the text supposes the reader to identify the grammar form according to the formal features 9 words, word combinations, sentences) which must be combined with the definite meaning. One must learn the rules in order to identify different grammatical forms. Pupils should get to know their features, the ways of expressing them in the language. We teach children to read and aud by means of grammar. It reveals the relation between words in the sentence. Grammar is of great important when one teaches reading and auding.

   The forming of the perceptive grammar and reproductive skills is quite different. The steps of the work is mastering the reproductive skills differ from the steps in mastering the perceptive skills. To master the reproductive grammar skills one should study the basic sentences or models. To master the perceptive grammar skills one should identify and analyze the grammar item.

   Though training is of great importance to realize the grammar item.

                                 Introducing new language structure.

We will consider ways in which children can be introduced to new language structure.

The importance of language awareness

   When we present grammar through structural patterns we tend to give students tidy pieces of language to work with We introduce grammar, which can easily be explained and presented. There are many different ways of doing this, which do not (only) involve the transmission of grammar rules.

   It is certainly possible to teach aspects of grammar - indeed that is what language teachers have been doing for centuries - but language is a difficult business and it is often used very inventively by its speakers, In other words real language use is often very untidy and cannot be automatically reduced to simple grammar patterns. Students need to be aware of this, just as they need to be aware of all language possibilities. Such awareness does not mean that they have to be taught each variation and linguistic twist, however. It just means that they have to be aware of language and how it is used. That is why reading and listening are so important, and that is why discovery activities are so valuable since by asking students to discover ways in which language is used we help to raise their awareness about the creative use of grammar - amongst other things.

   As teachers we should be prepared to use a variety of techniques to help our students learn and acquire grammar. Sometimes this involves teaching grammar rules; sometimes it means allowing students to discover the rules for themselves.

What do we introduce?

Our job at this stage of the lesson is to present the pupils with clear information about the language they are learning.     We must also show them what the language means and how it is used; we must also show them what the grammatical form of the new language is, and how it is said and/or written.

   What we are suggesting here is that students need to get an idea of how he new language is used by native speakers and the best way of doing this s to present language in context.

   The context for introducing new language should have a number of characteristics It should show what the new language means and how it is used, for example. That is why many useful contexts have the new language being used in a written text or dialogue.     

   A good context should be interesting for the children. This doesn't mean that all the subject matter we use for presentation should be wildly funny or inventive all of the time. But the pupils should at least want to see or hear the information.   

   Lastly, a good context will provide the background for a lot of language use so that students can use the information not only for the repetition of model sentences but also for making their own sentences.

   Often the textbook will have all the characteristics mentioned here and the teacher can confidently rely on the material for the presentation. But the textbook is not always so appropriate: for a number of reasons the information in the book may not be right for our students in such cases we will want to create our own contexts for language use.

Types of context

   Context means the situation or body of information, which causes language to be used. There are a number of different context types, but for our purposes we will concentrate on three, the students' world, the outside world and formulated information.

   The students' world can be a major source of contexts for language presentation. There are two kinds of students' world. Clearly we can use the physical surroundings that the students are in - the classroom, school or institution. But classrooms and their physical properties (tables, chairs, windows, etc.) are limited. The students' lives are not constrained in the same way, however, and we can use facts about them, their families, friends and experiences.

   The outside world provides us with rich contexts for presentation For example, there is an almost infinite number of stories we can use to present different lenses. We can also create situations where people speak because they are in those situations, or where the writer describes some special information. This is especially useful for the practice of functional language, for example.

   We can ask students to look at examples of language which show the new language in operation, though this last category can sometimes have no context. These three sub-categories, story, situation or language, can be simulated or real. Most teachers are familiar with 'made-up' stones which arc often useful for classwork: real stories work well too, of course. In the same way we can create the simulation of an invitation dialogue, for example. But here again we could also show students a real invitation dialogue. In general we can say that real contexts are better simply because they are real, but they may have complexities of language and comprehensibility which can be avoided by simulated contexts - life-like but clearly mode-up to some extent.

   Formulated information refers to all that information which is presented in the form of timetables, notes, charts etc. Once again we can use real charts and timetables, growth statistics, etc. or we can design our own which will be just right for our students.

   There are variations on these different kinds of context, of course, but we can broadly summarize what we have said so far in the following way: