CC BY
9DOI: 10.18522/2070-1403-2018-71-6-311-320
ПЕДАГОГИКА
(шифр научной специальности: 13.00.08)
УДК 37
Irina V. Batunova, Natalya V. Baturina,
Ekaterina I. Lobyneva, Albina Yu. Nikolaeva
Siberian federal university Krasnoyarsk, Russian Federation familiya irina@mail.ru nr80@yandex.ru katrin1505@m ail.ru space1120@yandex.ru
ANALYSIS OF TEACHERS' ACTIVITIES AND ITS ROLE AT THE ENGLISH LESSONS IN TECHNICAL HIGH SCHOOLS
[И.В. Батунова, Н.В. Батурина, Е.И. Лобынева, А.Ю. Николаева Анализ деятельности преподавателя
и его роль на занятиях по английскому языку в технических вузах]
Methods for learning foreign languages in technical high schools, which are widely used in our pedagogy for creating educational process, are described and analyzed. It is presented some necessary problems that are faced by both a beginner and a practitioner in pedagogy in order to define essential elements of practical lessons. One can see a number of fundamentals a teacher can rely on for improving educational process regardless of teaching methods or approach. Efficiency of a practical lesson is believed to depend directly on professional and personal skills of a teacher in order to arrange educational process. The practical component of the article is to analyze the activity and role of a teacher during the English lesson and define the number of necessary questions and problems for a teacher appearing during his/her work. Also the authors present an example of a typical lesson plan with the stages that is implied for the groups of the first and second year bachelors on the major 08.03.01 "Building Construction" at Siberian federal university.
Key words: method, efficiency, key concepts, learning foreign language, technical high school, lesson plan, bachelors.
An experienced teacher and beginner always have questions about English lessons peculiarities in technical Higher School. Due to modern teachers, methodists and didactics achievements the question is still topical in present day
teaching methods. The problem is in studying any foreign language as linguistic and humanitarian discipline which is included in overall developing ones in technical Higher School. That is why teaching above mentioned discipline requires special attention [2]. English plays a very important role from the modern world education paradigm point of view and it is necessary to remember that English language is not only educational non-core discipline or scientific sphere but also a very important component in the educational system which reflects the general level of future professional competitiveness in the world labour market. Consequently the opportunity to have self realization in the chosen profession will depend on students' level of the English language mastering and using. A teacher should remember that mastery of language material directly depends on his/her teaching methods.
Initiative, the ability to think creatively, find outstanding problem solutions, choose professional way properly, be ready to self-study during all professional activity are the most important professional characteristics in the modern world. That is why nowadays a teacher must not only provide students with definite knowledge but help them to become independent, creative and self-confident [1, P. 45]. At the same time our society demands qualitative education and successful people speaking English fluently in their professional activity and interpersonal communication.
Verbal activity of low intensity is one of the main problems of teaching student English. It is connected with not enough practical language using. Having only 2 hours of English per week in and without speaking it in everyday life, students forget everything they have learnt during the lessons. The problem of insufficient verbal activity is topical not only for Higher School students but also for the whole society because now people have the opportunity to travel and communicate with representatives of other nationalities. To reach this aim it is necessary not only to know the English language but have the skill of its practical using. Even students who know English well are very often afraid of making mistakes in their answers during the lessons and while communication with foreigners. There is a language barrier to overcome which means to solve the psychological problem that can disappear having communication with other people [4].
Teachers' work means not only proper lesson structure but constant mastering his/her professional skills because a lesson atmosphere and students' motivation depend on their teacher. When a teacher starts his/her lesson he/she sees only inter-
action activities, materials and not always thinks about the theory of teaching and learning. This resulted in certain questions: How to create teaching process effectively? How to improve students' skills, abilities and knowledge? How to form students' motivation to learn the English language? [5]
English language teachers have always been interested in the foreign language studying approaches. Today there are a lot of methods but 8 ones are mostly used in practice:
1. Grammar translation method is a widely used one applied by the Soviet teachers. The aim of this method is to teach students written translation and reading first of all. Working with the method teachers must make up texts to automate certain grammar structures and rules. On the basis of the method learning thematic vocabulary, spelling, grammar and their further training with the help of grammar deep texts are practiced. It is worth of noting that at present time the method is not widely used in modern teaching but can be applied studying dead languages.
2. Direct Method starts learning the language from the very beginning. A native language is prohibited during the lessons. The idea of this method is to create "complete language surrounding" for students.
3. Audio-Lingual method - on the basis of this method there is audition which includes students' records listening. The aim of the method is to develop students' foreign language perception. To control the understanding of listened material there are a lot of written exercises and tests, for example to reconstruct the heard sentences, remember certain data, dates, numbers, names etc. This method is effective to widen topic vocabulary, improve pronunciation, intonation and it teaches to percept speech of different tempo and distinguish native speaker emotions.
4. The silent way - using this method a teacher plays a role of a listener. The main aim is not to interpret students and to impose their point of view. Teachers' level of English does not influence that of students. The teachers do not pronounce anything applying this method. It is notable that this method is not used in the Russian pedagogy but it can be evaluated by the teachers applying innovative methods.
5. Suggestopedia - using the method the teachers divide the lessons into some cycles. In the beginning of them they give students new materials and during preceding ones they are trained and atomized doing active and passive exer-
cises and games. The idea of the method that English can be mastered if you become an imaginary character during the learning process. So, all students can have other foreign names, invent new biographies to be completely ab-strogated and relaxed to get rid of their fear to communicate in a foreign language, so to say "language barrier". It is important to remember that some scientists consider this method to be pseudo scientific.
6. Community Language Learning - this method includes a lot of interactive exercises such as group and pair work, role games, surveys etc. This method is used on every stage of modern education because it lets control and use students' knowledge and skills both in tasks and communication with a teacher during the lesson and inside the group.
7. Total Physical Response Method - this method means that students studying at the initial stage percept material passively without using it practically in their foreign speech. They must physically react to some lexical units. Having mustered two first above mentioned stages students begin introducing and practicing language by themselves.
8. The Communicative Approach is one of the most widely used and preferred modern teaching method. It appeared in Great Britain when a new educational aim was formed in its teaching system. This aim suggested to master a foreign language as a mean of communication first of all being an information exchange and transfer knowledge change and skills during the communication process [6].
There are advantages and disadvantages of all these methods. So Diana Larsen Freeman (1986) considered them from the point of view of their aims, learning process, teacher student interaction, native language role, learning language aspects and most often student's mistakes. So what is the most effective and best method of the English language teaching? To answer this question every teacher must widen the information about methods to help himself/herself to be in teaching method choosing and using it in practice. Although today, answering stage educational standards demands teachers prefer communicative approach which, in turn, is based on the belief that the language learning is a continuous process to be achieved only when learnt as a means of communication. Then a teacher must be capable to be: a manager of classroom activities; a facilitator of learning; a co-participant in the learning process; a negotiator; a motivator -stimulator; an advisor -
an expert; an encourager; a resource; a provider of feedback on learners attempts of communication; a competent speaker of the target language; a good listener; an observer-monitor; a researcher; a patient person [8]. A teacher must be aware of the communicative approach principles and key concepts. It is necessary for him to study and improve his/her education and master his teaching methods.
We insist that one of the education stimuli is teacher's constant self-education. The dynamic triangle difficulty, a teacher - a student - a subject, creates a great number of questions to be answered, problems to be solved and results to be determined by a teacher [6]. Every time a teacher comes into a classroom to teach something he/she will face with problems and if he/she is a self-developing teacher he/she will be a self-educating one. That is why it is necessary to pay attention to the following professional aims:
• to be an expert of the theoretical background in language learning and teaching;
• to have the analytical skills for different teaching contexts and classroom conditions evaluation;
• to master alternative teaching techniques and to put them into practice;
• to be confident to adapt his/her teaching techniques when it is needed;
• to have practical experience of different teaching techniques using;
• to be in self-educating process and give the students required knowledge;
• to have skills of interpersonal communication ;
• to be flexible and opened to changes [7, P. 380].
Thereby successful teaching activity can be divided into three sections:
1. Teach and interact with students at the lesson.
2. Change activities and materials during the lesson.
3. Define the effectiveness of the lesson criteria.
We underlined the above-mentioned sections from the effectiveness point of view because the lesson assessment begins with a visual perception. In two first sections a teacher can find the coverage of some theoretical concepts which will be used for making a questionnaire with the aim of disadvantages of lesson effectiveness determination. Thus every teacher section should consist of the following parts: theoretical part and questionnaire sheets for teaching activity self-assessment. The third section should compose the set of criteria to evaluate the lesson effectiveness according to all educating process components which were distinguished taking into account teaching practice results.
Our practical component of the article is to analyze the activity and role of a teacher during the English lesson and define the number of necessary questions and problems for a teacher appearing during his/her work thus helping the new-beginners and practitioners to estimate the lesson effectiveness, identify the components forming the educational process for its improving regardless the teaching methods and approaches because the effectiveness of practical knowledge depends on professional and personal abilities of a teacher to organize the educational process [3].
Here is an example of a typical lesson plan with the stages that is employed for the groups of the first and second year bachelors on the major 08.03.01 "Building Construction" at Siberian Federal University (Table 1):
Table 1
Typical lesson plan
Date:
Group/s: Aims: by the end of the lesson my students will be able to ... Materials:
Anticipated problems:
Timing Stages Patterns of Interaction
1. Warming-up 2. Homework checking 3. Vocabulary/Grammar 4. Reading/Speaking/Listening/W riting 5. Feedback
Now let us describe each item of the lesson template.
"Date" and "Group/s" points may seem obvious but they are able to save some time before and at the lesson which can be wasted by a teacher who is trying to remember the date or topic of the previous class. It is also valuable when a lesson is being substituted by a new teacher who could have no idea of what was done a week ago, for instance.
"Aims". One knows that each lesson could have a variety of aims, which include:
• linguistic aims
• communicative aims
• (cross-)cultural aims
• skills aims and so on.
We believe that a well-thought and structured aim will be able to employ almost all the items mentioned above and assist a teacher in evaluating his/her teaching activ-
ity. For instance, the Unit "Trades on a site" in the students book contains a lesson "Instructions", so the proper aim set for the students will be: "By the end of the lesson my students will be able to give instructions to the labourers about erecting scaffolding at the building site". As we can see this aim includes: linguistic objectives (the imperative, specific range of vocabulary), communicative objective (students learn how to complete a certain task at the site via the English language), skills objective (practice of speaking, listening, reading - all those are the textbook tasks), socio-cultural objective (students are familiar with the certain method in their careers). Such aim also makes it clear what kind of homework has to be given to the learners and what should be checked and assessed during testing. So, spending time on formulating a lesson aim of your own (using the teacher's book or teacher's notes as an assistant) will increase the level of teaching awareness and will provide students with an idea of what part of the curriculum they are situated in at this definite point.
"Materials" item of the lesson plan assists a teacher in dealing with the equipment, handouts, copies of tests, CDs, etc. - all types of teaching resources needed for a particular class. Completing this section may not just save teacher's time but get rid of the additional efforts for the lesson preparation. "Anticipated problems" is the part of the plan which describes any difficulties that probably may arise at the lesson. For example, in a heterogeneous group of bachelors levelled at A1 - B1 according to CEFR, one of the anticipated problems seems to include timing: those with higher level of the English language will spend less time on completing the task than their groupmates with lower levels. As a facilitator and a manager of the educational process a teacher should think of possible solutions to this problem, e.g. add several questions to the task for students with higher level of English, employ pair/group work with both lower students and a higher ones or provide more examples for the task. Despite of the frightening to some educators idea of any problems at the lesson, this point of the lesson plan is aimed at reducing any obstacles.
We assume that "Timing" section could be effective to the utmost. Not only should it assist to lesson stages but keep the lesson at a certain pace avoiding wasting time on minor things. A teacher, however, should keep in mind that timing is 1) a subject to adjust - with higher students you can spend less time for the activity, for example, 2) to be reasonable - if, for example, a teacher spends 4 minutes for a text reading, s/he does not plan 3 minutes for the learners for the same text. Clear timing schedule improves the effectiveness of the educational process, we believe.
"Stages" are optional, due to the curriculum, textbook content, lesson aims, equipment involved, but according to our teaching experience it would be better to introduce a certain frame both for a teacher and students to follow. Warming up can be used as a means of vocabulary and grammar revision, as well as language functions, small talks on the topic, drills. At this point or straight after it a lesson objective should be given to the students by a teacher to motivate and involve them in the learning process. Homework checking and/or assessing can be moved at the end of the lesson depending on its length, task form, etc. Feedback is obligatory. That is the stage which sums up everything happened during the class. Besides giving a new home assignment, a teacher should comment on students' performance and outcomes, highlight those points which seem to be more problematic for students and answer learners' questions if there are any of them. Several minutes spent on the feedback help students to realize if they have fulfilled the lesson aim or not. We consider there is no need in thinking that these stages could become boring to students as a textbook and a teacher have to employ a diverse number of tasks which are both settlers, i.e. they can calm students down, help them focus on the activity, and stirrers, i.e. tasks aimed at moving around the class, participating in group or pair work.
"Patterns of Interaction" item of the lesson plan supplies the necessary balance between teacher's managing role and students' performance during the class. "Teacher - class" is not always the effective variant for the whole lesson of the English language. Pair work should be surely used, especially in the heterogeneous groups. Having been written in the plan of the lesson, this item presents the amount of time at the lesson that students spend alone or together. Depending on the lesson aims, we suggest at least four patterns of interaction which are better to be used every lesson: "teacher - class", "teacher - student", "student - student", "student - class".
Despite the fact that some teachers consider a lesson plan to be an old-fashioned way of preparing for the classes, we still believe it is one of the most efficient ways of enhancing teaching activity [11, pp. 121-122]. Indeed, teaching materials on ESL are provided with teacher's book or teacher's notes not only by the leading publishing companies (e.g. Oxford University Press) but also by the Russian ones (e.g. Prosveshcheniye). Nevertheless, we suggest writing a simple lesson plan which can reduce a number of teaching problems later.
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_8 октября 2018 г.
