Contents introduction chapter I. Psychological characteristics of children of primary school age

So, the purpose of this course work is to study the methodology of teaching pronunciation at the initial stage of learning English.
The objective of this work is to teach the formation of speech pronunciation skills with the help of the proposed exercises for mastering the sound structure of the English language.
Relevance - you need to know that it is at the initial stage of learning that children quickly learn new material, they are characterized by imitation, which helps, on a subconscious level, to put off newly acquired knowledge.


CHAPTER I.
PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF CHILDREN OF PRIMARY SCHOOL AGE


1.1 Reflection of the mental characteristics of children of primary school age in the process of teaching English
“Teaching a foreign language to children from the age of six or seven has again become the subject of an interested conversation between teachers, philologists and parents. Society is not satisfied with the level of language training of secondary school students and one of the ways to shift this level is to shift the starting point of the process of teaching a foreign language to preschool education or grade 1 of secondary school, which are traditionally considered the most favorable periods for mastering a second language.” [2. 138]
As V. V. Davydov, a specialist in developmental psychology, writes, primary school age is a special period in the life of a child, which stood out relatively recently historically. It was not among those children who did not attend school at all , nor was it among those for whom elementary school was the first and last stage of education.
The emergence of this age is associated with the introduction of a system of universal and compulsory incomplete and complete secondary education.
According to VV Davydov, we can only talk about the most characteristic features of this age. When a child comes to school, the entire system of the child's relationship with reality is restructured, as the world-famous Soviet psychologist D. B. Elkonin emphasized.
“The 'A' behavior and good grades are what constitute the child's relationship with adults and peers. The first thing adults ask a child is "How do you study?" and a normally developing child craves praise and tries to make sure that he is rewarded and not scolded.” Moreover, at primary school age, children are inquisitive, they are interested in everything new, and the newly received information remains in their heads for many years. When a child is interested, he easily concentrates and performs the tasks given to him, especially if they are of a playful nature. Moreover, younger school age is the most favorable for learning foreign languages, since at this age children still tend to imitate, but already mixed with thinking, that is, conscious.
When teaching children a foreign language, it must be remembered that “ the psychological and pedagogical concept on which the teaching of foreign languages in different countries was based was based on the theory of language acquisition by the child that existed until recently. According to this theory, the child acquires the language as a result of imitation of the speech of adults, in an imitative way without purposeful learning. In other words, no one divides the flow of speech into units of assimilation for the child, does not dose speech patterns, does not build them in a certain sequence, does not explain the rules of grammar - and yet, by the age of five or six, a normally developing child already masters this most complex grammar to such an extent that that builds independent statements, successfully solving communicative tasks, and by seven or eight complex sentences, texts of considerable length appear in the child’s speech. [3.11]
And according to this theory, the child masters the second language in the same way as the first - spontaneously, without isolating the rules, thanks to an extraordinary ability to imitate, which is lost over the years. The proof is the child's development in a bilingual environment. But imitation is not the main mechanism of language acquisition in childhood - the possibility of independent construction of an utterance is achieved due to the huge (unconscious) analytical work of the child, which not only imitates, but dismembers and generalizes everything that he sees and hears and derives a system of rules that determine the expression of individual thoughts and intentions of the child. “All children, regardless of the specific features of their native language, go through a stage of so-called supergeneralization . Formations like " children ", " turned on the light", " fish have no teeth" in the speech of Russian children, " comed " " goed ", " footies " in the speech of small native English speakers - all this indicates that the child discovered the rule ( “this is how you should do it when there is a lot”) and wants to act along with this generalized rule. It is sometimes said that a child acts by analogy, but any analogy, as the eminent psychologist A.R. Luria in his work "Speech and Intelligence in the Development of the Child", suggests a generalization. [6. 127]
The psychological background of mastering the native language:
From all the sounds that he hears around, the child singles out as significant only phonemic, semantic-distinguishing oppositions of the native language system. Small children memorize hundreds of words in a short time because a similar psychological situation arises when the English language performs the same social functions in the child’s life as the first one, for example, the need to play with a foreign partner, communicate with an English-speaking grandmother language, etc.
Under such conditions, a child will indeed learn to speak English faster and more successfully than an adult, and there is an opinion that what is learned in childhood is learned forever. But if the sphere of foreign language communication is narrowed, the skills and abilities of foreign language communication that the child successfully operated with disappear, and with the disappearance of this sphere for a long time, these skills are reduced to almost zero.
The implementation of these requirements presupposes an adequate psychological and pedagogical organization of the activity (more precisely, interaction) of the teacher and children in the learning process.
Typical mistakes of students in the English pronunciation of consonants, determining the degree of difficulty and ways to overcome them.
One of the most important ways of getting acquainted with a phonetic phenomenon at the initial stage is to show a visual, somewhat exaggerated demonstration of its features in a sounding text. The sequence of presentation of phonetic material is dictated by its needs for communication. Therefore, from the first steps, it is sometimes necessary to introduce sounds that are the most difficult, which have no analogue in the native language.
In teaching pronunciation, the analytical-imitative method has justified itself, in which sounds subject to special training are isolated from a coherent whole and explained on the basis of an articulatory rule; this is the analytical part of the work. Then these sounds are again included in the whole, which is organized gradually: syllables, words, phrases, phrases, and are pronounced by students after the sample, imitated.
I. When training children in the perception and pronunciation of sounds, the techniques of conscious and unconscious imitation are used.
Unconscious imitation is the assimilation of the sound system by repeating after the teacher. This is how the sounds of the first group are assimilated.
Conscious imitation involves telling children the rules of pronunciation. For example, the teacher explains to the children where to raise the tip of the tongue when pronouncing the sounds [t, d, r]. Conscious assimilation is especially important when staging sounds similar in foreign and native languages.
II. The second group of exercises, as noted above, is aimed at the formation of speech hearing.
Speech, or phonemic, hearing is the ability to distinguish the sound composition of speech and synthesize meaning when perceiving speech. [15]
First, it is necessary to note the general features of teaching a foreign language. The teacher needs to strive for the classes to be held on the basis of an individual approach in the conditions of collective forms of education. Secondly, the teacher should offer such a way of mastering knowledge that would be aimed specifically at development, and not to the detriment of it. And for this it is important that each child be the main character in the lesson, feel free and comfortable, take an active part in the discussion of the topics of the lesson. Unfortunately, one can often observe the following picture in the classroom: the teacher is very active, uses visual aids prepared by him, leads the lesson and comments on its plot, uses various forms of work, including frontal ones. But when teaching English, it is important that the children be liberated, together with the teacher, "create" a lesson. Not only and not so much knowledge and proficiency in language and speech material determine the effectiveness of the process of teaching a foreign language at primary school age, but the readiness and desire of children to participate in intercultural communication in the language being studied. This is possible if the main form of school activity is not listening, speaking, reading or writing in a foreign language, but live, active communication with the teacher and with each other.
When learning English, due to its special phonetics, it is important in what voice the teacher pronounces words and phrases and what is the expression on his face. Of course, the voice of the teacher should be kind, conducive to communication, and the facial expression should correspond to the tone, which should be intriguing, conspiratorial and trusting, or serious, businesslike, expressing the joy of the meeting, inspiring success. The main thing is that the student, entering into communication in English, does not feel fear for a mistake and strives to realize this or that communicative intention with all the means at his disposal. According to M.N. Vyatyutnev, a methodologist, a psychologist who has written many books on language teaching in secondary school: “Mistakes are a means and a condition for the successful mastery of communicative competence; their presence does not indicate failure, on the contrary, they show that the learning process is going well and students are actively participating in it. " [15]
Some common pronunciation mistakes students make when learning to pronounce English consonants:
1. One of the typical mistakes of students is a weak, relaxed pronunciation, in which the articulating organ is not given strong muscular tension under the influence of the national way of life, because a tense, more energetic pronunciation is a hallmark of the phonetic system of the English language. Russian speech is characterized by general muscular non-tension of the speech apparatus, therefore, in order to rebuild the articulatory base of students when teaching English pronunciation, it is necessary to develop the muscular tension of the speech apparatus and, first of all, the lips, tongue and palatine curtain, for which it is necessary to regularly conduct a series of exercises called articulation gymnastics. It should be particularly hard to develop with a sluggish, casual, indistinct articulation speaking through teeth. [2]
2. Another typical mistake of students is the replacement of alveolar occlusions with dental ones. To prevent this error, you need to know First, where are the alveoli located? This can be easily seen with the help of two mirrors: we put one in the mouth on the lower teeth, in the second we look at the reflection of the first mirror; it must be remembered that only the tip of the tongue closes with the alveoli, because under the influence of their native language, students close the front of the back of the tongue and thus increase the area of ​​closure, turning alveolar sounds into affricates.[2]
It is easy to see in the mirror how the front of the back of the tongue is pressed against the upper teeth, and the tip hangs, while when pronouncing English, the tip of the tongue is not visible.
Therefore, it is necessary to conduct a set of training exercises, without which articulation skills cannot be acquired. [12]
Answer questions like:
Is this a table or a desk?
Is that a bed or a desk?
At this stage, error correction is of great importance.
The teacher should point out cases when alveolar sounds turn into dental ones under the influence of interdental sounds. This feature is easily assimilated if it is pointed out in time. To prevent errors in the articulation of [t], [d], special exercises for the language are offered:
a) find the most convex part of the alveoli with the tip of the tongue, make repeated movements from the upper teeth to the alveoli and back;
b) pronounce English [t], [d] at the beginning of words: ten, table, take, tall, teach, dance, dark, day, deal, dinner;
c) pronounce [t], [d] in the middle and at the end of words: at, add, actor; got, active, and, bad, bed, child, cut, flat, good;
d) to consolidate the skill of articulation [t], [d] in the process of reading a coherent text and the abundant use of these sounds in oral speech.
3. Another of the typical mistakes of students is the pronunciation of deaf stops [p], [t], [k] without aspiration, which can be corrected in the following ways:
Bring your palm to your lips at a distance of 5-6 cm and say, for example, the words: [pen], [ten], [keik], alternately articulating [p], [t], [k] either with aspiration or without it. If it is articulated correctly, then in the palm of your hand you should feel a weak stream of air when you exhale.
2) Put a few pieces of paper on your palm, bring your palm to your lips at a distance of 5-6 cm and say [p] in the words: [pen], [ten], [keik] with aspiration. From the exhalation, pieces of paper should fly off the palm of your hand.
3) Bring a lit match to your lips and pronounce Russian (p) nothing will happen to the flame, but it will go out if you pronounce English [p]. [12]
To compare the unaspirated and aspirated pronunciation of stop plosives [p, t, k] read the following words: package, cake, Pasha, there; first, as usual in Russian, and then with aspiration, as in English, in order to better catch the difference by ear. This type of work greatly speeds up the process of setting the aspirated pronunciation [p], [t], [k] for students.[10]
When learning the aspirated pronunciation of the consonants [p, t, k], one should point to the positions when these consonants are pronounced with minimal or no aspiration before short vowels and after the fricative [s]. Since in such cases we pronounce them in the same way as in Russian, i.e., starting the pronunciation of voiced during the explosion of the consonant.[2]
4. The next typical mistake of the phonemic nature of students is the stunning of voiced stop plosives [b, d, g] at the end of a word under the influence of their native language. In order to avoid stunning, as G. P. Torsuev writes in the book “Problems of Theoretical Phonetics and Phonology”, it is necessary to increase the stage of contact, to delay opening. You should pronounce sounds first at the end of a word, before vowels and voiced consonants, train them, and only then - before deaf ones. Experience shows that the stunning of the final voiced is not due to insufficient hearing acuity of students, but due to the interference of the native language.[12]
When teaching, it is necessary to compare within the studied language with the native language, in some cases within the same language. When mastering this phonetic phenomenon, intonation by ear is decisive. The possibility of another error should also be noted - the presence of a vowel echo in the final position, which can lead to confusion of words: [bIg-bIgє]. In order to avoid this mistake, it is necessary to weaken the muscle tension of the articulatory organs and remove the voice until the lips open.[3. 87]
5. The English sound [v] is perceived by students as a fricative sonant [w], which leads to the erroneous use of one phoneme instead of another. A mixture of English [v] and [w] is found when pronouncing the following words: invent [Inwent] instead of [In'vent, novel [no'wel] instead of ['novel], vote [w?ut] instead of [v?ut], vocation [w?' keI?n] instead of [v?'keI?n].
The combination very well is usually pronounced by students [we'rI wIl] instead of ['veri wel]. The difficulty in differentiating these phonemes in the Russian-speaking audience is explained, firstly, by the fact that the graphic and acoustic similarity of the English phonemes [v] and [w] contributes to their confusion. In order to achieve the correct pronunciation of the English sound [v], students, first of all, need to explain the features of the articulation of English [v], [w], then proceed to a special training of the organs of speech, directed and to create the skill of recognizing and pronouncing these sounds:
a) lowering and raising the lower lip.
Slightly lifting the upper lip, expose the edge of the upper teeth and press the lower lip against them. Lowering the lower lip, expose the lower teeth. Repeat this movement without dropping your jaw. The upper lip is immobile. Slowly and carefully pronounce the English sound [v] several times, followed by reading the words: vet, vice, visit, ever, never, very
b) Push lips vigorously forward. Strenuously blow out air through the contracted hole. Avoid whistling noise. Repeat this movement many times and start pronouncing the English sound [w], and then the words: went, well, wine, will.
c) Open the lips up and down, slightly exposing both rows of teeth, then bring the lips closer, leaving a small gap between them. Slowly blow air out through the gap. After repeating this movement many times, give an analysis of the movement of the organs of speech, determine the difference in articulation [v], [w], proceed to thoughtful and slow reading of English words.[6]