7.7. System of exercises in teaching monologic speech

Forming a communicative skill to produce monological utterances begins at the moment when students combine several speech patterns into a logical sequence at the level of a single phrase into a super-phrasal unit. The super-phrasal unit (SPHU) is an item of teaching monologic speech. The SPHU, as distinct from a group of phrases, is syntactically organized and communicatively independent. Within the SPHU sentences are usually composed after different patterns. Combining these patterns, especially different ones, presents a certain difficulty for students. Therefore, they should be purposefully taught how to compose SPHUs.

The following sequence of activities for learning monologic speech can be presented as a specific system of exercises in teaching monologic speech:

1. exercises aimed at mastering a logically coherent combination of phrases into the SPHU;

2. e xercises in making up independent utterances at the level of a monological unit with the help of cues:

verbal and - a sound or visual speech pattern at the level of a SPHU;

illustrative - a logical-syntactical scheme;

aids - illustrative visual aids (a picture, a still of a film-strip, etc.);

3. exercises at making up independent utterances at the level of a monological unit without any cues.

7.7.1. Exercises of group I

Exercises of the 1^st group are aimed at teaching students to combine speech patterns assimilated before into an utterance of a super-phrasal level. Performing these activities students should also master the means of inter-phrasal connection characteristic of the type of monologue under study in a given cycle of lessons.

Group 1 exercises are simulative communicative productive ones. They can be exercises in rejoinder (a phrase of a student is joined to a teacher’s or another student’s phrase) or activities in combining structurally similar or different patterns. The procedure can be T-P, P-P, Sp-P, P-Cl.

E.g. The subtopic ‘Classroom’, the 5^th form

Task: Children, let’s describe our classroom. I begin. Help me, please.

T: Our English classroom is big and light.

P₁: There are 3 windows in our classroom.

P₂: The windows are large.

P₃: There are 12 pupils’ desks in the classroom.

P₄: The pupils’ desks are blue. Etc.

This is an exercise in rejoinder. Each student’s utterance equals 1 phrase, but, connected with the previous ones, it becomes super-phrasal. The teacher’s task is to direct students’ utterances and to approve only of those, which logically correspond to the previous ones. The phrase like ‘There are 12 pupils in the classroom’ cannot be approved of. This is so because the content of an utterance produced by a student is determined by the logical category – speaking to describe things, not humans or animals, for example. The same happens in case of a Sp.-P procedure. The check-up answer is given on tape.

Students’ activities falling into this group of exercises also include some language exercises in comprehending means of interphrasal connection, characteristic of a definite type of monologue. These are exercises in picking up the necessary means of connection, in copying them out, in combining 2 or 3 sentences with the help of these means of cohesion. At the elementary level of teaching English these exercises are to be performed when students pass on to reading topical texts. Thus, when reading the text ‘In the Living-Room’ the teacher should draw his students’ attention to adverbial modifiers of space, indicating positions of different objects in the course of description.