5.7. Conclusions

In this talk we have studied the nature of communication in order to come to some conclusions about the type of activities our students should be involved in.

We have seen a need for activities that involve the students in having a communicative purpose, using language freely with no teacher intervention. We have also said, however, that students will need controlled exposure and practice of new language.

We have stressed the need for integration of skills, showing how in real life people seldom work with one skill only when dealing with a topic. We have also shown how speaking and writing have some major differences, which must be differently dealt with in a teaching programme.

Discussion

1. Which do you think are more important in a language learning programme: practice activities or communicative activities? Why?

2. Do you think that all speaking and writing has a ‘purpose’? Give you reasons.

3. If you were learning the American Indians’ language of gestures (Chinese, Esperanto, Portuguese) would you like to work with your classmates with no teacher supervision? What advantages and disadvantages would there be in such an activity?

4. How important is the written skill for school leavers? How important would it be for you if you were learning Japanese as a prospective tourist?

5. In what ways is writing ‘more difficult’ than speaking? Do all students find writing more difficult? Give your reasons.

6. Take an exercise from an English language textbook and say where it would occur on the communication continuum. Say what to do to make it completely communicative.

7. Take any piece of reading material from an English textbook and think of how it could be used for integrated practice of other skills.

8. Take any piece of written English that explains how something works and then write down how you might explain the same thing orally to a friend. What differences would there be and what changes did your written text undergo? What for?

6. Typology of exercises in teaching english

6

In this talk we are going to define an item of teaching a foreign language, to characterize different approaches to the problem of classification of exercises and to determine its principles. We’ll also dwell upon the system of exercises, their types and kinds and basic methodological principles of constructing the system of exercises at the modern stage of TEFL.

.1. What is an exercise: Psychological and

pedagogical background

6.1.1. Exercise as an item of teaching

6.1.2. Teaching curve

6.1.3. Structure of an exercise

6.2. Different approaches to the problem of

classification

3. Criteria of classification of exercises: Types

and kinds

6.4. System of exercises

6.4.1. Basic notions of a system, subsystem, complex, cycle, series, group of exercises

6.4.2. Characteristics of the system of exercises

6.4.3. Basic methodological principles of constructing the system of exercises

6.5. Conclusions

6.1. What is an exercise: Psychological and pedagogical background

Learning a foreign language as a specific kind of human activity is characterised by general conformity with a child’s acquiring the mother tongue as the process of knowledge acquisition and formation of skills to be applied in different communicative situations. Knowledge acquisition and skills appliance take the final shape in an individual’s language experience.

With the mother tongue acquisition, such an experience is formed in the child’s development. It is the result of non-guided, spontaneous influence of environment, particularly social surroundings. With foreign language learning, an individual experience is effectively and structurally formed only in the result of various purposeful systematic exercises.

I.A. Zimnyaya defines an exercise as ‘the repeated performance of definite operations or kinds of language activities (skills) aimed at their assimilation, based on understanding this aim and the general programme of action and accompanied by conscious control and adjustment’.