CREATING AN ENGLISH-SPEAKING ENVIRONMENT

CREATING AN ENGLISH-SPEAKING ENVIRONMENT IN TEACHING ENGLISH: PROBLEMS AND WAYS TO SOLVE THEM

Xaydarova Yulduzxon Alimovna

An English teacher

15 th specialized secondary school

Annotation: An important and integral part of the process of mastering the English language is the creation of a language environment. This refers to the creation of conditions that contribute to faster and better mastering of all types of speech activity necessary for successful communication in a foreign language. We deliberately use the terms “mastering” and “mastering”, and not “studying”, because by the latter we mean a certain academic, speculative interest in a foreign language as such, in contrast to the ability to use it in practice in situations of real communication.

Key words: language environment, outside the classroom, model a “personal” foreign-language environment

Recently, quite a lot has been said about the need to create a language environment. Numerous ways of using Internet resources, specialized educational Internet resources for teaching certain aspects of a language or using a technology or a combination of technologies have been proposed in articles and studies. All studies are aimed at finding effective methodological solutions for conducting a better lesson (read: not boring, using ICT, etc.), in fact, replacing the study of a foreign language by creating a foreign language environment using a certain amount of techniques and means of using ICT in the classroom.

Another specific omission on the part of researchers is that they, as a rule, talk about the creation of a foreign language environment in the classroom, while the creation of a foreign language environment outside of class time is not perceived as an important part of the teacher's work. The generally accepted opinion is that the creation of an extracurricular foreign language environment can be successful only outside the student's familiar language environment. In other words, you can immerse yourself in it only by leaving Russia and moving to live or study in an English-speaking country. Thus, the student finds himself in an environment where he is forced to use English as a means of communication, receiving and transmitting information. The teacher, according to this concept, cannot influence either the creation or the choice of the student's extracurricular language environment.

This practice seems to us, at least, unreasonable. At best, it leads students to be insecure about their abilities, at worst, to a firm belief that they cannot speak English. Very often, students lose all interest in studying English at the university (we are now talking only about non-linguistic specialties) precisely because they do not see the value of the acquired practical skills, because they do not have the opportunity to apply them outside the classroom, or they are not sufficiently motivated to look for such opportunities and use them. The absence of a language environment, as well as the lack of desire to artificially model it, significantly narrow the boundaries of the scope of students' activities, reduce their communication needs, make them perceive skills in various activities as unrelated and lead to an inability to use them in a real communication situation. As a result, students are able (more or less qualitatively) to solve a problem in a narrowly organized environment (for example, to complete tasks for choosing the necessary grammatical form in a lesson), but at the same time they do not transfer this skill to real life. This is similar to how, knowing the multiplication table and using it to solve arithmetic problems in the classroom, a student does not apply this knowledge when shopping in a store. That is why students begin to perceive English only as an academic subject (often difficult and boring), as an insurmountable obstacle to getting a scholarship, or (fortunately, rarely) as a very real threat to their stay in the ranks of university students.

Meanwhile, the modern information environment provides ample opportunities to move to a qualitatively new level of foreign language proficiency without spending months or years in another country. Students can develop within their professional interests by using online English-language courses in specialties of interest, reading articles from library resources of English-language periodicals, from entertainment - news, literature (magazines, newspapers), watching movies and theater performances, regularly visiting English-language sites of museums, art galleries - the list is endless. Consistent and persistent accustoming oneself to the perception of information in English helps to quickly overcome the psychological barrier and begin to improve in a foreign language.

The influence of the language environment has been studied in the scientific literature (for example, see 5 on this). It is generally accepted that the language environment performs several functions, most researchers agree that the language environment performs informative, motivational, communicative and accelerating functions, some researchers also distinguish corrective, eliminative and activating. We believe that an artificial language environment helps to create incentives to learn a foreign language, establish the need to communicate in it, speed up its assimilation, serve as a source of information, remove psychological barriers and consolidate the acquired knowledge.

In our opinion, guided by the rule “do not use translation into Russian”, students can try to some extent to model an English-speaking environment for themselves. A necessary step towards achieving this goal is to consciously choose English-language sources in cases where Russian translations can be used. In this case, it becomes clear that we are not talking about using only a computer or Internet resources, we are talking about using the language as a whole.

Of course, students should be encouraged to actively seek out and use these opportunities. In other words, they must consciously and purposefully build their own English-speaking environment. The role and influence of the teacher is thus not limited to the classroom; its task is more global - in the absence of an English-speaking environment, to increase the motivation of students to model a “personal” foreign-language environment and active existence and self-realization within its framework.

Our concept of creating an extracurricular English-speaking environment is based on some simple practical ideas.

Personalized / personality-oriented / individual nature of the process of mastering the English language . Under the individual nature of the process of mastering a foreign language, we mean the following: the process of learning a foreign language should be organized in such a way as to increase and use with the maximum possible return the student's personal interest in setting and achieving goals. As a rule, when learning a foreign language, students are forced to be guided not by personal interest or their professional priorities, but by the recommendations and requirements of a philologist teacher, who may have a very superficial idea of the specialty and specialization of his students. During classroom sessions, it is not always possible to fully take into account the personal interests of students. However, if we talk about creating an extracurricular language environment, then it is much easier and easier to “tune” it to the range of topics that are understandable and interesting to students or that the student is currently interested in studying for some reason.

Let us explain this idea with a specific example. In some universities, there is a practice of out-of-class translation, when students translate the so-called "thousands" of characters, using sources recommended by the teacher. As a rule, the list of recommended literature includes two or three sources (textbooks and monographs). It is assumed that the student will independently choose a chapter or article, the content of which resonates with his professional interests. In fact, the coincidence of the student's personal interests and the content of the translated text is extremely rare.

Firstly, when choosing material for translation, it is necessary to comply with the requirement that parallel/simultaneous/independent translation of the same text by several students is inadmissible. Therefore, if two or three students in a group are interested in, say, taxation issues, then only one of them will translate the chapter of the book devoted to this issue. The rest will be forced to translate other chapters with other topics. Secondly, there is a very real possibility that, due to the limited number of recommended materials, students will not be able to choose a single text that would be of interest to them from a professional point of view and therefore will be forced to compromise and be content with translating texts they have chosen according to for other reasons, most often just at random. Thirdly, the list of recommended literature has not been updated for several years. As a result, the content of the materials offered for translation has time to lose its relevance and, therefore, every year will be of less and less interest to students. As a result, the whole idea of out-of-class translation is discredited: having no personal or professional interest in mastering the translated material, students translate extremely carelessly and do not improve their English language skills.

Meanwhile, we see a way out of this situation in the fact that the student should be given the opportunity to select texts for translation on his own, for example, English-language materials on the topic of the course project, which he is currently working on. Of course, the teacher reserves the right to approve or disapprove the texts chosen by the students, but only on the basis of purely formal criteria, such as the volume, purpose of the book, etc. Practice shows that in this case the motivation of students increases significantly and they approach translation more responsibly and consciously. Moreover, they are not afraid of the possible increased complexity of the text - even in this case, they prefer to translate exactly the text chosen by themselves and necessary for the completion of the course project, often consciously exceeding the limit of the volume of the translated text set by the teacher.

Limiting the use of "translated materials" and creating an English-speaking learning environment . We assume that the use of untranslated materials helps to quickly master a foreign language to the proper extent, while the volume of this material matters: the denser the flow of information in a foreign language, the faster students learn to cope with it.

A good example in this case is Sweden, a country where almost the entire population speaks English to a greater or lesser extent. The English-speaking environment in this country was created at the state level, one can argue about the merits or demerits of such an aggressive foreign language influence, but the fact remains that the Swedish tram conductor has no problems communicating with foreigners who speak English.

I would like to dwell on the Swedish experience in more detail. It is necessary to make a reservation, we will talk about teaching English at school, by the time they enter the university, students have already twice passed the mandatory national testing in a foreign language (an analogue of the Russian GIA and the Unified State Examination). Studying a foreign language at universities is not compulsory. However, we are confident that this valuable experience can to some extent be transferred to Russian education, since Russian practice shows that school education, even in its best form, is not able to train students to speak English at a high level and provide skills self-education, university education has to solve these problems.

Swedish schools and universities do not use translated materials. In addition, the study of English is closely related to the implementation of regular school activities and in close connection with other compulsory school subjects. Further, at the university, students can choose the language of instruction, in the past few years, studies have begun to appear on the problems of the effectiveness of education in English. (See more on this: 2) They point out as problem areas the explanation of complex material and the use of humor - the traditional difficulties faced by a foreigner who speaks the language even at a high level. Nevertheless, this experience can be quite valuable for Russian universities. Creating a library of resources in English, encouraging students to use original sources, should all become common practice if we are to achieve active use of the English language for professional purposes.

Language is a working tool . In our opinion, the need to use a foreign language as a working tool is obvious. It makes no sense to study a language for the sake of the language itself (at least for students of a non-linguistic university). Students should and can be provided with a dense professional stream, giving the opportunity to improve their English language skills. According to researchers, it is not the absolute correctness of what is said (grammatical, phonetic, etc.) that comes to the fore in professional communication, but the achievement of professional goals in the process of communication (see about this: 7). Teachers working with resources that have translation into Russian could offer students an alternative - studying the issue in the original language. In our opinion, in this case, cooperation between the Department of Foreign Languages and the graduating departments could provide invaluable assistance. Drawing up an interdisciplinary plan, recommendations for students of different courses on the use of additional professional resources in English, would greatly stimulate the interest of students and help them improve both their professional and language skills.

Let us clarify our assumption with concrete examples. Many Western universities offer podcasts (lecture recordings, usually in English) in the public domain for everyone to study. Helping students to navigate the subject of additional materials, teachers of language and specialized departments could create a certain space, on the one hand, independent, on the other hand, a relatively controlled quality flow of material in the subjects studied. For example, the use of youtube video hosting resources allows you to listen and see educational material of a sufficiently serious quality, satisfying your curiosity in those areas of specialty that are not the object of study according to the Educational Standard, or the amount of material provided in accordance with the program seems insufficient to the student.

Language is a means of communication . Another obvious idea that is often overlooked in the learning process. The Internet offers almost limitless opportunities for improving receptive skills - reading and listening, but productive writing and speaking skills, of course, should not be left without attention. The statistics of the results of the international IELTS exam shows (see about this: 3) persistently low scores for Russia in writing (2010, 2011, 2012 - 5.9 points) and a decrease in the score for speaking in 2012 from 6.6 to 6.5 points. This speaks of the difficulties associated with certain objective conditions of education in Russia. The reforms of school education, which practically ousted complex analytical forms of written work from the school process (an essay on literature is a clear example of this), lead to the fact that the intelligible expression of one's thoughts, even in one's native language, has become a serious problem. Students at the university do a lot of written assignments, and if the Russian language usually improves during the learning process, then complex analytical work in English is not provided for by our conditions, and writing skills are trained only within the framework of the set educational tasks, and they are usually limited and do not exhaust many requirements that a graduate makes not only work, but also life circumstances.

Of course, each type of speech activity needs to be learned through this type of activity, therefore, a person who wants to learn how to write and speak must find the opportunity to write and speak, i.e. find a motive. In this case, we do not analyze the possibilities of an English lesson, because our main goal is to create an English-speaking environment outside the classroom.

In teaching writing, it is also important to stimulate the initiative of students, to refer to the resources provided by the information environment. In this case, we are talking not only about the possibilities of the Internet, but also about the reference and educational materials provided by the university libraries.

As for speaking, it is more difficult to find resources, but if you wish, you can achieve this. The Internet will again prove to be an indispensable tool if students are willing to spend extra time developing their speaking skills - if desired, you can find many who want to communicate via Skype, perhaps the same non-native students who want to learn to speak better, more confidently. In addition, many language centers and central libraries offer free meetings with native speakers. It takes some effort to find English clubs, which undoubtedly exist in all major cities, but regular communication in the language being studied eventually helps to overcome the language barrier and significantly improve the level of foreign language proficiency.

Formation of educational autonomy. Under the formation of educational autonomy, we mean the formation of the need for self-development in general and the skills of learning a foreign language using all available resources in particular. In other words, it is important and necessary to teach students to learn, to learn new things, to seek and obtain knowledge. Unfortunately, at the moment the situation in most universities is such that students are used to the fact that new knowledge is presented to them ready-made on a silver platter ahead of time, long before a request for new information is formed in their minds. This leads to the fact that the motivation to discover something new, the joy of discovering something new, the desire to discover something new on their own is absent from the majority of students as a fact. They do not know how to realize cognitive interest, do not fix the moment of its appearance and, therefore, do not know how to adequately respond to it: they do not seek to satisfy the need for new knowledge.

How does the idea of forming learning autonomy correlate with the ideas we stated at the beginning of the article about the need to form a language environment? In fact, one logically follows from the other: an “autonomous student” with developed skills for independent, conscious study of a foreign language will inevitably seek and actively create opportunities for building his own linguistic environment.

However, it seems to us that the desire to build one's own language environment is not enough. It is extremely important to teach students to rationally approach its creation. This means that they must be able to choose the most optimal way to achieve the goal, the most effective sequence of actions leading to the desired result. To do this, the “autonomous” student should develop the skills of critical analysis of the result and an adequate assessment of the efforts made.

The formation of educational autonomy involves not only the independent use of information resources in order to extract information. An unconditional requirement for the formation of educational autonomy is the ability to use all available reference materials in order to master the language at a higher level. The resources of the NRU HSE-Perm libraries provide an opportunity to use modern non-translating dictionaries specially created for foreign language learners. Thus, students are faced with the task of not only mastering, say, a text on a topic of interest, but also the ability to solve emerging difficulties on their own, using an extensive set of specialized linguistic tools: dictionaries, reference books, etc.

Thus, the learning potential of the artificial English-speaking environment is unusually large, and its creation outside the classroom allows us to solve a number of problems:

•    to maximally individualize the process of learning a foreign language and mastering various types of speech activity in a foreign language, since it brings it closer to personal goals and objectives understandable to students.

•    generate the need for self-development

•    provide the tools for this development.

References:

1.   Сысоев П.В., М.Н. Евстигнеев. Использование современных учебных интернет ресурсов в обучении иностранному языку и культуре. http://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/ispolzovanie-sovremennyh-uchebnyh-internet-resursov-v-obuchenii-inostrannomu-yazyku-i-kulture\

2.   Ingrid Johansson, Bosse Jonsson Effects of Teaching in English at Swedish Universities Mälardalen  University Mälardalen University 2006 Edith Cowan University Research Online. http://ro.ecu.edu.au/

3.   http://www.ielts.org/researchers/analysis_of_test_data.aspx

4.   Артамонова Л.А., Архипова М.В., Ганюшкина Е.В., Делягина Л.Г., Золотова М.В., Мартьянова Т.В., Инновации в обучении английскому языку студентов неязыковых вузов. Инновации в образовании Вестник Нижегородского университета им. Н.И. Лобачевского, 2012 №2 (1), с.28 – 33. Нижегородский госуниверситет им. Н.И. Лобачевского, Нижний Новгород, 2012.

5.   Бондаренко И.П. Реализация обучающего потенциала языковой среды при включенном обучении (лексический аспект). РЯЗР, 1989, № 1. -С. 81-87

6.   http://www.afh.uzh.ch/index.html

7.   Markus Weil, Patricia Pullin English as a lingua franca in education – Internationalisation speaks English http://www.academia.edu/1738578/A-Z_Teaching_in_English_in_a_non-English_speaking_environment