CC BY
5УДК 372.881.161.1
DOI: 10.25688/2782-6597.2022.3.3.2
E. V. Gorshkova «
w Institute of Secondary Vocational Education named after K. D. Ushinsky Moscow City University, Moscow, Russian Federation E-mail: protopopovaev@mgpu.ru
Communicative approach to the study of the grammar system of russian as a foreign language1
Abstract. The purpose of the article is to provide an analytical review on the communicative approach development and its impact on the study of the grammar system of Russian as a foreign language, show the model of teaching the Russian grammar system to non-native speakers. The research methods were literature review and case study. Due to the communicative approach, students began to successfully participate in speech situations, but over time, communicativeness separated from the conscious approach to learning, which led to the fact that grammatical errors were fixed in the process of skill formation. The modern method of teaching Russian as a foreign language again drew attention to the correctness and awareness of speech within the framework of the communicative approach, and to the correction of errors from the very beginning of learning. In a correct understanding of the communicative approach, grammar is given an important place Our analysis shows the most productive approach to teaching Russian grammar in terms of communicative approach.
Keywords: communicative approach; communicative competence; grammar skills; speaking skills; Russian as a foreign language.
Introduction. The objective of the communicative exercise is to make the student want to participate in the speech situation. The communicative-activity approach appeared as a scientific development in the late 60s and early 70s of the last century. And it appeared precisely in Russia — here it is necessary to mention the works of Passov E. I., Lapidus B. A., Leontiev A. A. The main task of this approach was initially positioned to master communicative competence. Communicative competence is the ability to solve communicative problems with the help of language tools for one's own purposes. In turn, about nine competencies have already been distinguished in the communicative competence, including language, speech and others. The modern competence paradigm of all education has forty or more competences. In addition to language skills, the competence model also began to include such competencies as: organizational skills, the ability to use information technology, the ability to work in a group, the ability to lead a group, and many others, which leads to a shift in attention from other
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© Gorshkova E. V., 2022
equally important competencies — language, speech, sociocultural, compensatory and so on.
In 1976, the next international congress of International Association of Teachers of Russian Language and Literature took place in Warsaw. At this congress the communicative approach was declared the main direction of teaching Russian as a foreign language. The founders of this approach, such as B. A. Lapidus,
A. A. Leontiev believed that it was necessary to teach speech from the very beginning only in speech communicative exercises. However, many Methodists, including
B. A. Lapidus, understood that this was impossible.
At the moment, one can observe the flowering of communicative competence, but so far in all textbooks on the study of Russian as a foreign language, compiled on a communicative approach, one can see the classic exercises for filling in the gaps and compiling sentences. Thus, we see that it is impossible to teach from basic to advanced based on a purely communicative approach.
In order to understand the origins of the communicative approach, one must turn to the history of methodology in general. Vocational teaching of foreign languages was recorded in ancient Rome. The first translation schools appeared there, where students were engaged in translating classical Greek texts into Latin. At the same time, the first dictionaries appeared. Explanatory dictionaries appeared first. The next stage in the methodology of teaching foreign languages is the teaching of Greek and Latin in the Middle Ages. At this stage, the translation method also dominated, since there was no need to use these dead languages in communication. This went on for a long time until people began to communicate. The construction of railways gave impetus to the development of communication. People began to travel to other countries and a social order arose for the knowledge of a living language for communication. For teaching a living language, the old teaching methods were not relevant. The methodology required new techniques and methods. Thus, the following prerequisites for the development of new approaches to the study of languages have appeared:
- social order;
- the need for a scientific framework that explains how language acquisition occurs.
At the end of the 19th century, there were different ideas about how this happens. Supporters of the main method at that time believed that teaching a foreign language should take place in the same way as teaching a native language, which, from the point of view of modern methodology, is a serious flaw. This point of view was argued by the fact that the child masters the necessary communication tools by the age of 3, although initially he did not speak any language. Accordingly, it is necessary to teach the way a child is taught texts are not needed, grammar is completely excluded, explanations and translation are not needed — this is opposed to conversation, songs and game methods. There have been some successes in the practice of teaching the language in this way because the strength of these methods is the phonetic side of speech. Secondly, situations were selected in which
the language represented itself well and from which it was possible to understand how the language works. Thus, the selection of situations was made extremely high quality.
The next significant change in the methodology is the teaching approach. Teachers no longer stood at the podium with a pointer, dictating material in a monotonous voice — they began to move around the classroom, seeking understanding in different ways and at different levels.
At the same time, there was another point of view. At that time, Gestalt psychology was popular in the practice of psychology, and the supporters of this approach believed that one should not teach individual units of language but consider language as a whole and consider language units in a situation. Some provisions of this approach prompted the development of foreign language teaching methods in general.
In the 20th century, there was a kind of methodological "burst" and at that time a large number of different methods appeared. And methods continue to be born until now.
It's necessary to draw attention to those approaches that have left a deep mark in the methodology of teaching foreign languages. First, it is worth noting the audiolingual method. This method was created by two prominent American scientists — Charles Freese and Robert Lago. These two scientists, a linguist, and a psychologist, took a behavioral point of view of skill development. In other words, a stimulus is a response. In the classroom, this happened as follows: a limited number of models of the English language were identified and it was necessary to make sure that these models were securely fixed in the brain of the listener and reproduced by the students at the right time. However, memorization of speech patterns alone turned out to be ineffective — students only memorized the patterns, and eventually stopped analyzing why this or that form was used. A big plus of this method is a clear sys-tematization and selection of material, and in combination with other methods gives a positive result.
Another method that not only left a mark on the methodology, but continues to exist to this day, is the grammar-translation method, which was the main method in the 19th century. This method is based on logical analysis, on qualitative tests, certain exercises, and grammar explanations. One property of this method is that it returns every time another popular method fails.
The reading method developed by Michael West at the beginning of the 20th century was especially relevant for those students who did not have the opportunity to travel to the country of the language being studied. It is noteworthy that not special educational texts were chosen for reading, but what was interesting to the students themselves.
In addition to methods, various training exercises were also developed at the beginning of the 20th century, which foreign language teachers still resort to.
As mentioned above, the need for one method or another was determined by the social order. As an example, let's take the post-war situation in Europe —
the war ended and millions of people began to travel from one end of Europe to the other, which caused the need to learn the language as soon as possible in order to adapt in another country. Also, there was a need to create a system for assessing the knowledge of these students in order to provide them with work and other benefits. Hence the need arose to create a methodology that would quickly include a person in public life, give him the opportunity to speak, participate in professional activities and survive — and this is how the communicative approach was born. Thus, we can assert that this method also appeared in connection with the social order. In 1971, the Council of Europe instructed to describe the language by levels, to create a communicative competence with a description of its components and what means a student should have at each level.
The competence itself eventually appeared in the 90s along with the term "threshold level". At the same time in Moscow, many methodologists made an attempt to describe the threshold level of the Russian language. The Methodists of the Pushkin Institute were the first to do this. After them, their definitions were presented by the methodological councils of Moscow State University. Lomonosov and Moscow State Linguistic University. Maurice Thorez, colleagues from the countries of the post-Soviet space also joined — Armenia and others. Today, each university has departments that deal with competencies of different levels.
The description of the language by levels made it possible to clearly understand what a person needs to know in order to survive — how many lexical units are needed for this; What you need to know to move to the next level. This description highlighted the so-called "threshold level", which allows a foreigner to study at a Russian university.
It is generally accepted that the methodology is due to the Council of Europe for communication and level description, but the first dissertation devoted to communication exercises was written in 1963 by Efim Izrailevich Passov. He developed a set of communicative exercises for learners of Russian as a foreign language long before the ideas of communicative methodology came from Europe. It was possible to come to a communicative technique earlier than Europe thanks to a highly developed psychological science. Here it is necessary to mention L. S. Vygotsky, A. N. Leontiev, A. A. Leontiev, S. L. Rubinstein, I. A. Zimnyaya, T. V. Akhutin and others.
Due to the communicative approach, students began to successfully participate in speech situations, but over time, communicativeness separated from the conscious approach to learning, which led to the fact that grammatical errors were fixed in the process of skill formation. The modern method of teaching Russian as a foreign language again drew attention to the correctness and awareness of speech within the framework of the communicative approach, and to the correction of errors from the very beginning of learning. In a correct understanding of the communicative approach, grammar is given an important place.
We would like to note the merits of the modern methods of teaching Russian as a foreign language:
1. Professionally and qualitatively developed theory.
2. Bright and interesting educational and methodical complexes. It is worth noting here that there are still few such high-quality WCUs created in Russia compared to Western developments.
3. The first large edition of the Book of Grammar. Russian as a foreign language" issued by Moscow State University. Lomonosov, edited by A. V. Velichko.
4. Well-designed testing system.
Thus, now, in the methodology of teaching Russian as a foreign language, there are many manuals devoted to vocabulary, phonetics and grammar of the Russian language, but there are relatively few teaching materials that contain such communicative exercises that would motivate students to enter into a speech situation.
Model of teaching Russian as a foreign language by the communicative method. The communicative method is intended to organize the educational process according to the model of real communication. It is based on the idea of communicative linguistics that the unit of the process of verbal communication is a speech act, during which its participants, using linguistic and paralinguistic means, realize their communicative (in other words, speech) intentions (or intentions). The latter by no means always consist in simply conveying some information, but may also have a different focus, such as: to receive information, to induce a person to act or to keep him from acting, to win over the interlocutor, etc. From this point of view, it is studied which means of language are used to carry out this or that intention. The pinnacle of language proficiency is declared to be communicative competence, which in a productive way consists in the ability to achieve the necessary goals of communication with the help of language, and in a receptive way — to understand the intentions expressed by the speech of other people. Its organic aspects are linguistic competence, which consists in knowing the means of the language and the rules for their use, as well as speech competence, which consists in the ability to build meaningful speech works using these means: from a complete statement to a lengthy text.
From the psychological side, the communicative method proceeds from the ideas of the activity of psychology, while increasing attention to the individual characteristics of the individual in terms of his real needs, interests and capabilities, and therefore the real goals in using the language.
In accordance with this, with the communicative approach, the student is recognized as an active subject of learning, and his communicative competence is considered the object. The purpose of training is the formation of communicative competence corresponding to the real needs, interests, and capabilities of the individual. The orienting basis is communicative tasks correlated with the language and speech methods of their solution.
The communicative method is based on a number of principles:
1. Communicative orientation of training. The basic unit of learning is the (oral or written) speech act. This principle requires students to be involved from the very
beginning of training in communication between themselves and the teacher in order to solve life problems that arise in the course of a changing reality. A natural or close to it motivation for the performance of educational tasks is assumed with the focus of the student's attention to a greater extent on the purpose and content of the statement and to a lesser extent on its form. This requires a special (communicative) behavior of the teacher, who involves students in communication, sets them communicative tasks.
2. The practical orientation of training is basically understood in the same way as in the concept of a conscious-practical method, with the clarification that special attention is paid to considering the real communicative problems of students in the performance of certain speech acts. Therefore, there should not be communicatively irrelevant tasks, such as: "Replace the following sentences of the active voice with sentences of the passive voice".
3. The speech orientation of the educational process involves such a learning path in which lexical, grammatical, and phonetic skills are formed, if possible, in parallel with speech skills and communication skills, and in addition, they require the classification of exercises and the division of language material based on operations that are performed with its various categories in the functioning of language in speech.
4. The functional approach to learning consists in using such an organization of language means, in which units of different subsystems (phonetic, lexical, morphological, syntactic) are studied together, participating in the transfer of the meaning of a complete statement [1]. This approach consists in identifying the most important areas of communication that predetermine communication needs, reflected in certain intentions, speech actions, texts. The functional approach is also manifested in the fact that the selection and sequence of studying linguistic facts does not reflect their place in the language system, but is determined by their importance for communication within the selected topics and situations, the degree of difficulty and the complexity of presentation. At the same time, it is believed that this approach does not deny the systematic nature of education, which, however, is considered not as a particular methodological, but as a general didactic principle and is understood as a certain quality of knowledge. The knowledge that the student receives should reflect the connections between the units of the language that enter into combinations with each other when expressing any communicative intention. In modern textbooks on Russian as a foreign language, the case system is considered precisely from the point of view of functionality [4].
5. Situational-thematic organization of learning involves recreating situations of real communication in the lesson: any phrase that is part of the exercise must be related to the specific circumstances that occur in life [3]. When studying the case system, this principle correlates with the functional approach. So, for example, when training the instrumental case within the framework of the topic "My Hobbies", students learn to talk about their interests using the verbs to be interested, to get involved, to engage with nouns in the instrumental form.
6. Syntactic basis of learning. Since a complete thought is expressed only in sentences or large segments of speech, all new lexical and grammatical material is necessarily presented and studied as part of a phrase. It is the rules of its construction, the lexical content and the morphological characteristics of the included words that are actualized when solving certain speech problems that determine when and how this or that lexical or grammatical material will be introduced, explained and trained. Syntax is an important link in understanding the meanings of cases, since it is at the level of syntax that the functions of case forms are presented.
7. Concentricity and stages in learning. The allocation of stages and concenters is based on determining the importance of mastering the skills to solve certain communicative tasks in a certain period of study. In accordance with this, the educational minimum of situations, topics of communication, as well as the language material used is selected — in this case, cases and their meanings.
8. Accounting for the individual psychological characteristics of the student's personality, which are understood as:
- natural ability to learn the language;
- greater development of auditory or visual memory;
- greater development of logical or associative thinking;
- tendency to inductive or deductive assimilation of new material;
- active or passive attitude to life in general and to learning in particular;
- introversion or extraversion of character;
- features of the student as a representative of his people, a citizen of his country and a native speaker of a certain language;
- outlook;
- interests;
- role in the team.
For the communicative method, individualization of learning based on the characteristics of the student's personality is the main means of creating motivation for learning and activating students during classes. Consciousness of learning is also associated with this, considered as a general didiactic principle and understood in the sense that the interaction of active practice and intellectual comprehension of the language is associated with the awareness of the students themselves of the "personal meaning" of the actions performed, their understanding of the specific goals of the lesson, the ways to achieve them and the results of their own learning. work, conscious acceptance of the organization and motivation of learning that are offered to him.
Principles of grammar exercises implemented with a communicative approach. When learning a language, one of the most important aspects is the assimilation of the grammatical system of the language. In connection with this, there
Historically, the attitude of methodologists to teaching grammar has changed: the role of grammar in teaching foreign languages has been either insignificant, implying intuitive assimilation (direct method, natural method, etc.), or has become
dominant (translation methods, consciously-comparative method, etc.). At present, since foreign language communicative competence is recognized as the main target of the subject "foreign language", language knowledge and speech skills, including grammar, act only as certain means of its formation and mastering them by students is not an end in itself.
Thus, the goal of teaching the grammatical aspect of oral and written speech is the formation of grammatical skills that are realized through communication.
In the methodology of teaching Russian as a foreign language, various methods of implicit familiarization with the laws of constructing Russian sentences have been developed, which make it possible to assimilate the studied units through the practice of speech. In general, these techniques can be described as subject, verbal, and situational ways of introducing and fixing the morphological and syntactic patterns of the Russian language.
The subject path is that the selected grammatical units and categories are introduced based on real objects that can be found in the classroom.
The verbal path consists in the fact that the necessary grammatical categories are studied in a series of ordinary, standard situations, but the attention of students is drawn to actions. Each statement contains a new verb, justified by a momentary situation, state. At the same time, actions that actually occur or are played out in the class are called. For example, you can invite the student to stand near the blackboard, ask him to read, write, draw, and at the same time turn to the class with the question: What is he (she) doing? or: sitting at the table, close, open a book, etc. and ask the question: What am I doing? Then the students themselves produce and name these actions, thus training in the use of the 1st and 3rd person singular verbs [2].
The situational way seems to us the most suitable for conducting lessons of training the use of prepositional-case forms according to the communicative model. Situational dialogues and interrelated remarks illustrating certain grammatical phenomena are widely used in modern textbooks of Russian as a foreign language. The necessary grammar is introduced and consolidated in the situations characteristic of its functioning. For example, using the prepositional case when answering questions such as: Where do you live? Where are you studying? Situationally conditioned replicas of a certain grammatical composition can be pronounced by different types of reconstruction (in the form of the past tense, in the form of the plural, etc.); at the same time, students "stock up" with useful colloquial clichés, frequent expressions.
The process of forming a sustainable skill involves the passage of the following stages:
- perception of a grammatical unit when a student encounters an unfamiliar grammatical unit;
- imitation of a grammatical unit (the student acts according to a given pattern);
- substitution, i.e. the use of a grammatical unit in various contexts;
- transformation of the model depending on the conditions of communication;
- reproduction, ie. independent use of the model;
- stage of combination [2].
Practice shows that the formation of grammatical skills and the development of the grammatical structure of a foreign language are complex and lengthy processes for the student. At the same time, the teacher needs to remember about the positive transfer of the grammatical system of the native language to the system of the language being studied and about intralingual and interlingual interference.
Positive transfer allows students to master the grammatical phenomena of the target language relatively easily. So, when teaching native speakers of languages of the Indo-European group, the Russian language does not need to be explained what the category of the number of nouns or the degree of comparison of adjectives is, since these categories are also present in their language. Here, certain grammatical phenomena of the Russian language, for example, the case system, cause a certain difficulty. If Czech or Polish students are familiar with this phenomenon due to their own language, although they will also have a number of difficulties due to different case endings and meanings, then for English-speaking students this amount of grammatical material may seem overwhelming and they will continue to make mistakes at levels B1 - C1.
As for interlingual interference, it is expressed in the transfer of the system of grammatical features of the native language to the system of grammatical features of the language being studied. This type of interference manifests itself as an advantage at the early stages of mastering the grammatical structure of a foreign language. An example is the word order in Russian and English interrogative sentences: the Russian language is characterized by greater freedom in word order while observing the interrogative intonation model, for English — a more strict word order, while changing intonation does not turn an affirmative sentence into an interrogative one. Another striking example is the absence of the category of number among the signs of adjectives (compare: beautiful shoes — beautiful shoes).
Interlinguistic interference can manifest itself after students have already accumulated certain knowledge about the grammatical system of the language being studied and they have formed foreign language grammatical skills. In this case, there may be a replacement of similar phenomena of the language being studied.
Errors related to interference and not only can affect the entire learning process. This is due to the formation of grammatical skills.
The formation of grammatical skills takes place in several stages:
- introduction of new grammatical material;
- primary automation of this skill;
- improving the skill.
As for the third stage, it is associated with the development of the ability to use the studied grammatical structures in oral and written speech. This is facilitated
by speech exercises aimed at developing the skills of speaking, writing, listening and reading in a foreign language.
Teaching cases requires constant monitoring by the teacher and regular work by the students themselves. Much attention should be paid to grammar exercises for classroom and extracurricular work. Here are the following types of exercises that correspond to the principles of the communicative approach and will improve the skill of using the correct case form:
Exercises in recognizing and differentiating a grammatical phenomenon: find sentences with a given grammatical phenomenon in a printed (sounding) text and fix it; fill in the table, diagram, based on the rule; find in the text examples of the use of ...; find on the page all cases of use ...; replace these constructions with grammatical equivalents, etc.
Question-answer exercises: ask questions to classmates, put the answers in the table; answer the question according to the given model; put the maximum number of questions to the text; choose the right questions for the given answers, etc.
Reproductive exercises: complete the text with given constructions; fill in the text with the given words; draw up a question plan for the text and retell it; supplement (reduce, modify) the dialogue on the model, etc.
Grammar exercises performed on the basis of visual aids have a great effect, for example:
- look at the picture and say where they are... (spatial prepositions and case form);
- describe the picture using the grammatical construction.;
- compose a story from the picture using a grammatical phenomenon;
- tell us what was not done in the room for mom's arrival;
- while working in pairs, look at the picture of the room. One of you guesses where he hid the candy, the second guesses by asking questions (general question, prepositions, case form);
- who do you think is shown in the picture (photo) and why are they gathered here?
Game tasks allow you to make grammar exercises fun, interesting and effective.
Examples of these types of exercises can be found in a number of educational and methodological complexes, including those that were selected for the analysis of the meaning of cases and the sequence of their introduction at the A2 level. It should be noted that mobile applications do not develop the habit of using cases sufficiently. In the analyzed applications, the main attention is directed to the development of lexical units.
Traditional grammar exercises play a big role in the formation of the language competence of students, and methodologists recognize the importance of such exercises in the framework of a communicative approach, however, we consider it appropriate to leave false exercises, exercises in recognizing and differentiating a grammatical phenomenon and reproductive exercises for extracurricular work.
Conclusion. The main task of the communicative approach is to teach foreign students natural communication by means of the language being studied.
Teaching dialogic and monologue speech of foreign students is a complex methodological task, since mastering the Russian language is associated with great difficulties for students and requires a lot of time and effort from both the teacher and the foreign students themselves.
Great attention was paid to the study of the structure of the Russian language at the very beginning of the emergence of the Soviet methods of teaching Russian as a foreign language in the 50s and 60s of the 20th century, when the main method of teaching was the conscious-practical method.
The communicative methodology that prevails today does not consider grammar as a separate aspect, not only in teaching foreign languages in a non-linguistic environment, but also in the country of the language being studied. However, the grammatical system of the Russian language is so complex that it requires significant efforts from foreigners to master it. The grammatical correctness of Russian speech is traditionally considered a very significant indicator of the level of language proficiency — and all this obliges RFL teachers to significantly focus on grammar in the process of teaching Russian to foreigners. However, this does not mean that when teaching the Russian language, the principle of communicativeness can be sacrificed to the principle of linguistic correctness of speech.
At present, the communicative method of teaching dominates in teaching Russian as a foreign language. Within the framework of this method, the need to study the language system of a language is also unconditionally recognized, since without grammatical knowledge it is impossible to use a foreign language as a means of communication. Grammar, not being the ultimate goal of learning, is the basis for the formation of speaking, listening, reading and writing skills, that is, all types of speech activity. In other words, knowledge of grammar is necessary for the exchange of thoughts, that is, for the implementation of verbal communication. This is the true goal of teaching any foreign language, including Russian.
References
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2. Galskova, N. D., & Gez, N. I. (2014). Theory of teaching foreign languages: Linguodidactics and methodology: teaching aid. Moscow: Academy. 190 p. (In Russ.).
3. Kodzaeva, O. S. (2016). Theoretical foundations of teaching the grammatical side of the speech of foreign students. Bulletin of the Maikop State Technological University, 3. (In Russ.). https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/teoreticheskie-osnovy-obucheniya-grammat-icheskoy-storone-rechi-studentov-inostrantsev
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