K.S.
Saratov, Saratov State University
LEARNING ENGLISH BY DESCOVERING VIA SILENT WAY
Annotation: This study considers an alternative method of teaching foreign languages — the method of silence (Silent Way); discloses the use of some tools, the elements of this method and their influence on the process of language learning of the students of the language university.
Key words: alternative teaching method,
Report text:
This survey is aimed to increase the teacher’s opportunities in practice of teaching foreign languages through the consecration and use of alternative methods of teaching English.
The language skills that students get on the lessons depend on the teacher’s knowledge and his or her pedagogical skills. So, a teacher makes a direct impact on the quality of students' knowledge. Thus we come to the question: how to make a process of acquiring knowledge and skills of foreign language more independent, self-contained? This question interested Caleb Gattegno, who was a famous Europe educator in the middle of 20th century.
Due to the method of teaching, which he consecrated in his book «Teaching Foreign Languages in Schools: The Silent Way», we have a completely new view on the process of teaching foreign languages. Language learning by the method of silence allows you to master the language, regardless of a teacher’s level of education.
Training is carried out by total immersion in the internal structure of the language, and as a result, the student’s knowledge gets stronger.
As the method of the silent way involves a large number of techniques and tools, only the most popular of them will be covered in this report. During the training by the method of silence, the student has to interact actively with the members of the group, in which he studies the language.
That develops the qualities such as teamwork, responsibility and commitment.
«Silent way» method is one of the most unusual methods of teaching. This method of training is based on the fact that the desire to know the language, originally embedded in each person who wants to study it, and most importantly — do not interfere with the students and not to impose teacher’s point of view.
Following this method, the teacher initially hardly says anything.
For sure, the languages have different phonetic systems. During the process of learning students often make a serious mistake pronouncing foreign words in a phonetic system of his native language. This is called "accent". A person who is not familiar with the phonetic peculiarities of the language being studied, it is sometimes very difficult to correct pronunciation.
Only experimentation and experience gained in practice will help you to understand the phonetic systems. The student himself comes to the correct pronunciation, understanding the features of grammar.
Silent Way is based on the following principles:
1) Reliance on existing knowledge of the native language.
2) Research approach to language learning.
3) Non-interference of the teacher in the learning process.
During training of pronunciation and reading skills on silent way teachers use special tables, in which each symbol represents a particular sound. Also, they use sticks and similar symbols.
Then, we offer to learn more about the most popular tools that are used for teaching through silence method.
Cuisenaire rods. They are made of wood and have 10 sizes. These sticks are widely used firstly in practice in colors and numbers and also some things and phenomena (like the time) may be represented by them.
The second popular instrument is the sound-color chart. Instead the sounds and the phonetic alphabet silent way teachers use colors. A teacher shows the sounds on the special color chart, asks the class to pronounce them, and notes the sounds that students pronounce.
One color represents one sound. Thus the teacher uses this chart to teach pronunciation. One more advantage of this method is that when the sounds of colors are mastered you can write English words in different colors and pronounce them without transcription, focusing only on the color.
Each letter is colored in a way that indicates its pronunciation. Using the word charts means that absolutely different languages such as German and Chinese, which use signs unfamiliar to the learner, can be immediately read and pronounced correctly.
Also, during the teaching through the Silent Way method a large number of games are used. They help to learn grammar effectively, and to fix new vocabulary better.
In this study, we will give you examples of some game elements of Silent Way which were tested on English language lessons with first-year students of the Faculty of Foreign Languages and linguistics.
We would like to start the game called "Journey" which helps to fix grammar material. The playing field is a maze. The participants' aim of the game is to get to a certain destination by selecting the correct answer in the task. In this example, you need to get to Cape Town, choosing between the forms of the verb “to be”.
The next game is called "armchair". It is aimed at consolidating new vocabulary. The teacher writes on the blackboard the word or phrase, while one student sits on a chair, turned back to the board, so that the student could not see written. Other students, through pantomime, show his friend that the teacher wrote.
The task of the student sitting in a chair is to guess and announce the correct answer.
On the practical classes of English we used colored sticks (Cuisenaire rods). It should be noted that they are easy to be replaced by children’s colored cubes. Their creative use in the study of the training topics as "Housing", "Furnishings", "Food" helped to promote speech-thinking activity and increase the motivation of students to effective consolidation, followed by the active use of new lexical items.
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