Contents theme: Developing linguistic competence in the system of primary school education Introduction

3.The criteria of assessing the linguistic competence in teaching foreign language
The competence-based approach today, a phenomenon of a rapidly developing area of ​​pedagogy, both in theory and in practice, is the basis of modern education.
The main provisions of the competency-based approach in English education are reflected in the Strategy for the Modernization of the Content of General Education and in the Federal State Educational Standards of the second generation.
The school today should become the skeleton where the foundations of key competencies are laid and developed. It is the school of the modern type that should lay, form and develop the key competencies declared by the state in cognitive, cultural, social, information or other areas.
The main idea of ​​the competency-based approach in primary language education is laying the foundations for the formation of a student's linguistic personality, his linguistic abilities and linguistic intuition, the development of skills in the culture of the word, communication, and the culture of speech behavior.
Competence is the ability to act acquired knowledge. Competence is an accomplished quality or a set of qualities of a student's personality (value-semantic orientations, knowledge, skills, abilities) and a minimum experience in a given field.
Key competencies are those that can be applied in various life situations, i.e. they are universal learning activities. They also include skills that are outside the subject areas, i.e. oversubject skills that should be developed and formed in all subjects of the school course.
Communicative competence is the mastery of all types of speech activity and the basics of the culture of oral and written speech, the ability to be mobile in the process of communication, to easily master and use different styles and dialects in your speech, as well as knowledge of other languages.
For the first time, the term "language competence" was used by N. Chomsky. He distinguished this term from the mere use of language. The difference between these terms for him was expressed in simple knowledge of the language and the ability to "language" in everyday life. Trying not to go beyond linguistics, he tried to move away from everyday life, highlighting the abstractly conceivable native speaker. The ordinary person, as a native speaker, he attributed to the object of psychological rather than linguistic research [Manfred 1987].
By the end of the 20th century, the successors in particular, began to refer to this term also knowledge of the language and the language of its real speaker, and real speech in real conditions. The conceptual function of these definitions was characterized , drawing attention to the difference in that. what a person says and understands in certain situations and what he is actually able to understand and say.
Based on the conclusions of scientists, in such a short time there has been a shift towards the side of the so-called human factor. But this phenomenon also gave rise to contradictions between the origin and development of language competence. According to the definition of the founder of this competence, it is based on the child's innate ability to "use the language", innate knowledge of the basic concepts and categories of grammar and the ability to use them in everyday speech. These skills are based only on the child's intuitive understanding of their native language. And if it speaks of language ability, then it refers to the education received, and it has a dual essence - natural and social.
Due to the fact that the content of the concept of "language competence" has changed, the research of scientists in the field of speech development of the child has also changed. It is impossible not to take into account research, both in the linguistic and psychological spheres, therefore, domestic and foreign researchers rely on the data obtained during the research. At the same time, his research gave rise to many methodological critics, which led to the conclusion that the concept of language competence, although it has a number of advantages, does not at all correspond to the ideas of research from the field of psychology, pedagogy and linguistics.
Therefore, in modern science today the following situation appears: the ideas and his followers do not suit specialists in these areas, but the term itself has remained and is used with a different meaning. Language competence (linguistic ability) in our science is understood primarily as a collected number of various skills that an individual needs to conduct a speech act with other members of society, as well as to speak a language as an academic discipline. Often these skills may not be the same for different authors, since at the moment too many skills do not allow them to be put into any clearly organized structure.
It should also be noted that many scientists do not use the term "language competence", trying to replace it with a synonym, for example, "knowledge of the language" and already mean not just individual skills, but integral large sections, which in some cases are repeated among representatives of various specialties, for example , the ability to construct a statement, the ability to understand speech in the works, and speaking, listening as special types of speech activity in the interpretation.
Despite the fact that approaches to the study of language competence have already been developed, the psychological problems of its content, development and measurement have been studied very little to date. We will highlight only some of them, which, in our opinion, are of interest in the psychological and pedagogical plan.
One of them is the unresolved psychological component of this competence. It will remain an unresolved mystery as long as it is singled out as the child's innate knowledge. And if they try to bring it to the acquired skills, then this competence appears immediately, as a result of either training or education received, or is attributed to a national or age category. Of course, both positions have the right to exist, but there are some points that limit these ideas, for example, by the result obtained, one can only sometimes judge the processes that helped to achieve this result.
Secondly, the society that surrounds the individual is only a background or conditions that help the formation of language competence (we cannot but take into account the psychological aspect of this action). It is practically impossible to establish a connection between the conditions and the result of the development of a given formation. The next point is that it is impossible not to take into account the limited conditions and opportunities of the subject in obtaining education. In connection with the above points, this psychological component retains an increased interest in the study of language competence.
The next problem is to identify factors and stages in the development of language competence.
As we have already indicated earlier, the psychological sphere contains a lot of material on the development of speech in a child from birth, gives a lot of recommendations to teachers and parents on how to build the process of education and upbringing, taking into account age characteristics. But it can be noted that the problem of the development of language competence was not the object of special study, it simply merged into one channel with the problem of speech development and the teaching of the English language at school. If we take into account the results of studies of the early ontogenesis of speech, as data on the prerequisites for language competence, then we will again return to the question of how language competence differs from speech, as a function of the inherent human mind and speech activity, as a person's ability to contact the environment and get to know the world around. Probably, It is precisely with this that the difficulty of studying language competence in the school period is connected: should it be considered already formed by the beginning of training and then direct your work only towards its development, or does its development only begin from the moment you enter school? So, here's another problem that stands out: where is the starting point?
But this is not all the difficulties that can be encountered in the study of this issue. Another large range of questions: how to measure and evaluate the level of development of language competence?
Some researchers believe that this is not necessary, since approximately all adult native speakers have equal competence.
Other researchers believe that the development of methods is needed to measure the level of proficiency in this competence, both in native and in a foreign language.
Our county ideas are closer to us, but with a little clarification: first, we need to create a toolkit that will help us see a holistic picture of the language competence of different representatives or groups of the language community. Correlation of the data obtained will make sense only when you set such a goal when developing entire methods. Then, in our opinion, it is necessary to correlate the obtained theoretical data, from which these methods were built, and the data obtained during the study. By the way, it should be noted here that the number of methods that allow measuring the level of development of language competence in a foreign language, at this time, significantly exceeds their number in the native language.
For a more detailed acquaintance with the above problems, it is first necessary to describe the structure of language competence, i.e. its components and their connections, and then track the changes in the selected components and their connections in development.
All the requirements set by the standard for the level of development of the language competence of junior students are enshrined in primary education programs. In these programs, language competence is a combination of all the knowledge, skills and abilities of a theoretical and practical orientation that a student must master when studying the English language course. At the same time, the essence itself is given out through the peculiarity of educational competence, as a commonality of requirements for the preparation of students in one or more educational areas. Educational competence is formed in the process of a student's personal growth, when he performs a certain set of actions. Regardless of the content of textbooks, academic subjects or different educational areas, language competence also includes meta-subject learning activities (how and where to find and process information) and the basic methods and skills of learning activities. First of all, language competence includes:
1) subject or linguistic knowledge and skills:
- a general idea of ​​the subject "English language", as the study of the native language, which is not only a social and social phenomenon, but also a constantly evolving, changing system;
- a set of linguistic knowledge formed on the basis of knowledge of the language system;
- knowledge and skills in working with language material, the ability to generalize, analyze and systematize it, as well as to develop and improve one's cognitive sphere through the data obtained.
2) meta-subject (knowledge about knowledge, techniques and means of perception and semantic processing of information) learning activities:
- to have the ability to correlate the knowledge gained at school and knowledge in the process of life experience;
- be able to work with educational texts, to see the main and secondary;
- to be able to see the distinctive and similar features and on the basis of these features to group.
Representatives of the educational system " Teaching the English language in elementary school is only the first step in mastering the basic material that can help students successfully continue their education in middle and senior levels.
All goals and objectives of the course "English Language" in elementary school should be aimed at the course of teaching English in the main school, and they formulate the goals of teaching English in the main school as follows:
-development and improvement of all types of speech activity (reading, listening, etc.);
-formation of elementary linguistic competence.
Based on the goals set, the authors of the program see the purpose of the subject "English language" in the initial link in order to form a functionally literate personality in the future, it is necessary to help the child realize himself as a native speaker of the language, its culture and traditions at the early stages of education. This means that the goal of learning should be defined as the total development of the student's personality through the use of all the tools of the subject "English language", in particular:
- to lay down the idea of ​​language as a holistic picture of the world, to contribute to the formation of logical thinking on the basis of the main provisions of the science of language, this will be a cognitive goal.
- formation of communicative competence (sociocultural goal).
In order to achieve the goals set, the following tasks must be completed:
1) to develop in children a sense of love for their native language, a sense of pride in the language, to realize that our native language is part of the national culture. To see and admire the beauty of the word, the beauty of the native language and realize its unique aesthetic value.
2) to be aware of oneself as a native speaker, a linguistic personality who can conduct a dialogue with the surrounding society, using all the means of language
3) to promote the formation of an intuitive sense of language in students.
4) to develop in children a sense of the need to use all the richness of their native language. Constantly work on improving your oral and written speech.
5) work on obtaining all the necessary language and speech skills in order to improve their written and oral speech.
As noted earlier, language competence includes knowledge of language norms that must correspond to certain language levels. The program for the development of language competence of younger students has five levels. The first level is called the entry level or basic. For example, when working on the development of speech, in particular when writing a presentation, the first level will include the child's ability to draw up a plan.
The development of all levels should be gradually becoming more complex.
One of the tasks of anticipatory learning is to teach students how to make statements. To develop this skill, you can use the following tasks:
1) Come up with a continuation of the text
2) Retell the text on behalf of one of the characters
3) Think of a similar text
4) Come up with a different ending to the text and many other exercises.
Undoubtedly, teaching younger students to compose stories and essays makes a great contribution to the development of language competence. Not only do they make the lessons interesting and exciting, they show young students what the inexhaustible possibilities of their native language are. How interesting and entertaining it is to be in the role of the author and create your own characters, invent their own life stories for them. After all, this is the best exercise where it is possible to use all the richness of the language!
If at the initial level, children can only retell simple texts or compose a simple story based on a series of pictures, then later their capabilities expand, and retelling is possible with a creative task.
When children retell the works of famous writers in writing, this is the best way to develop their sense of pride in their native language, country, enhances the culture of written and oral speech, and develops artistic taste. KD Ushinsky wrote that children learn most of all by imitating, but it would be a mistake to think that independent activity grows out of imitation [2005:238].
Therefore, it is necessary to include creative exercises in such tasks.
It is important to start teaching children self-checking, first it will be collective or group editing of the text, then mutual checking. Such exercises at the beginning of training will require a lot of time, but their benefits are enormous. Finding, seeing and eliminating a spelling or speech error will help children not only develop a culture of writing, improve their knowledge in one of the areas of the subject.
Communicative competence, [2009], develops during the discussion:
At the elementary level:
-understand the topic, find and systematize information (now children listen even more than take the initiative).
On the second level:
- the student is already able to put forward hypotheses and suggest ways to achieve the goal, he can independently prepare a short presentation and pick up visual material.
On the third level:
-Students will be able to independently develop the topic.
And finally, at the fourth level, communication skills are being developed in order to achieve the intended results and, at the final stage, be able to sum up their work.
Particular attention should be paid to the independent study of the text, the so-called reading competence.
Through text research, students need to learn:
- to see the position of the author and characters;
- conduct a dialogue with the author;
-determine the purpose of this text, its main idea;
- to draw conclusions about the read text;
- be able to find sentences in the text that reflect the main idea or positions of the characters, or human feelings.
Not the last place in the development of the language competence of primary school students is occupied by a skill called "problem solving".
If a student encounters tables or diagrams in the text, then here they will have to show their general intellectual skills:
- be able to read the table;
- be able to choose a reasoned and correct point of view;
At all lessons of the English language or literary reading, five minutes of speech warm-up or five minutes of reading must be carried out in order to develop cognitive processes (thinking, attention, and others).
To give students the opportunity to feel like actors by putting miniatures on works. Feel like writers, coming up with poems for various rules or give the opportunity to become artists and capture the characters of the studied work on paper. This expresses a personal approach, because even a weak student is able to complete these tasks. We must try to ensure that children in the lessons of literary reading master the information that will be useful to them not only in life, but also help to unlock their creative potential:
- the ability to interest the interlocutor;
- the ability to maintain a conversation;
- compose a congratulatory text;
- establish friendly or business contacts.
Undoubtedly, the position of the teacher also changes in such lessons, because he must build the lesson in such a way that the personality of the student is revealed in it. A variety of stimulation prims help children without fear of getting a bad mark or fear of making a mistake:
- designing the nature of educational interaction on the basis of taking into account the personal characteristics of students;
-demonstration of trust and tolerance in educational interactions;
- encouraging students to make a collective and individual choice of the type, type of task, form of its implementation;
- creating a situation of success.
The teacher now must not only transfer his knowledge to the student, the student now becomes a partner for him, because they have a common joint business, one goal - to teach how to learn! The teacher should only motivate, create conditions for the work of the student's thoughts, push, help with advice and, together with the child, rejoice at the result.
In the educational process, the main role is played by the communication between the teacher and the child, it is very important that the speech activity of students in the lesson is many times higher than that of the teacher. The speech of the teacher in the lesson can only perform an informative function (give a task, provide additional information) or a communicative one (praise, thank).
Of course, it is too early for elementary school students to assess communicative competence (in particular, language), but even summing up the results of such work, one can see how the interest of schoolchildren in the subject grows, how children want to speak out and give evaluation characteristics to other statements. Students can write down their thoughts and share their feelings. They can talk about the phenomena that occur in the language.
It must be remembered that success can only be with systematic and purposeful work.
In order for students to form a sufficiently high level of language competence, it is necessary that they receive sufficiently high and high-quality knowledge about the language. And for this it is necessary to have, first of all, a good textbook that would meet all the regulatory requirements laid down in the standards and programs.
But among the wide variety of teaching aids presented, the problem of choice today is very acute. Because the variable education system presented today in our society requires from the teacher not only methodological preparation for work on the chosen textbook, but also the need to know the characteristics of students of a particular class, their level of preparation. With changes in the goals of education in the new educational standards that were discussed above (shifting the emphasis on the formation of key competencies), the problem of choosing the appropriate teaching and learning materials all the more exacerbated.
After all, a modern textbook should now become only a compass in the entire system of methodological aids, which would only indicate the chosen direction, but without an appropriate supplement in the form of other information resources, could not contribute to the achievement of the goals set. Only then will the student be able to master the skills of independent search for knowledge, only then will he be able to learn to find important facts and relegate minor facts to the background.
The textbook today, of course, should contain the basic information that is written in the standards, the minimum information without which the development of the topic would be impossible.
On the other hand, the textbook should encourage the student to search for additional information from other information sources. Therefore, today, training kits for students include workbooks, video lessons, and readers, as well as electronic media, with which you can even test your knowledge on a particular topic.
The development of language competence implies a large educational space. All textbooks contain a sufficient amount of knowledge on such sections of the language as spelling, phonetics, vocabulary, syntax, morphology, word formation and others.
Undoubtedly, the fact that all teaching materials contain texts from fiction, classical and scientific literature is of great value, all these texts correspond to the age characteristics of schoolchildren. The texts are emotional, capable of influencing the emotional state of the child, thereby forming a picture of the surrounding life and developing the emotional-volitional sphere of students. Such tasks help to make the lesson rich, interesting, introduce the child to the literary word, develop all types of cognitive sphere.
In the textbooks is offered quite a lot of tasks that are aimed at developing all types of speech activity of students.
The author pays great attention to vocabulary work and vocabulary development in children. Each lesson contains tasks to replenish the vocabulary of students. For example, when studying the topic “Noun”, children are invited to get acquainted with the words of the thematic group “Vegetables and Fruits”, the spelling of which must be remembered. Thus, the vocabulary of children is replenished. Students will not only get acquainted with new vocabulary words, but if they wish, they can sketch or compose a story using new words. All the material of these textbooks is aimed at developing students' imagination, tasks are constantly offered for compiling texts, stories, and when reading poetic lines, children present pictures inspired by these lines. The proposed exercises make students engage in active mental activity, think about the meaning of words, where and when, in what speech situations it would be acceptable to use them. For example, when studying the topic “Single-root words”, after reading the words: goose, goose, goslings and caterpillar, children are invited to find something superfluous and explain why they think so, come up with sentences with these words, make up a dialogue and so on.
Already from the first grade in the textbooks of this author, you can find tasks on the etymology of the word. For example, when getting acquainted with the dictionary word pencil case, children will learn that this was the name used to receptacle for feathers.
Knowing the origin of this word will help them write the unstressed root vowel correctly.
Such an acquaintance of young students with history helps them to get to know the roots of their native language better, to be more attentive to the history and culture of the language.
Already in the alphabetical period, children learn that words can have one or more meanings. Colorfully designed illustrations for exercises help children to visualize the meanings of polysemantic words. When completing tasks for exercises, students find objects in the illustrations and correlate them with the letter and sound scheme, reason why they are called the same, although they designate different objects.
Of great importance for the development of speech is the acquaintance of children with synonyms and antonyms. The knowledge gained in the first grade in the further learning process is expanded and supplemented, children learn about the direct and figurative meaning of the word, work on the selection of synonyms and antonyms, expand their vocabulary. For example, an exercise from a 4th grade textbook: Combine words so that in each group there are words that are close in meaning. Explain your distribution. What do the words in each group have in common? Are there any differences between them?
Cruel, ruthless, merciless, ferocious, bloodthirsty, clumsy, clumsy, baggy, hard-hearted, merciless, clumsy;
Wish, message, want, news, bully, news, fighter, news.
The same work is done with antonyms.
The texts used in the textbooks help children to get acquainted with orthoepic norms in an entertaining way, teach them to use words correctly in speech (dressed and put on). The exercises presented in the textbooks contain tasks aimed at fostering a culture of speech behavior and communication.
For example, Read the text. What words did Nastya greet her grandmother and mother with?
Morning.
- Good morning, Nastenka! It's time to get ready for school.
- Good morning, grandma! I'm already awake.
- Hello, mommy!
- Hello, daughter!
Using the example of life situations, the author shows students what means of speech communication should be used in various situations.
There are many exercises in textbooks that are aimed at developing various speech skills: to see and distinguish between different styles of speech and types of texts, the ability to highlight the main idea in the text, build a text plan, title the text, find synonyms and antonyms in the text, as well as other expressive means of the language . Also, the educational material contains exercises that offer students to work on the ability to create their own statements, which allows the teacher to work not only on the development of oral, but also written speech: compose a text from a drawing and write it down, come up with a continuation of the text, and so on.
Much work is given by the author to teaching younger students the ability to write essays and presentations. In the section "Coherent Speech", the main place is given to work on the text and with the text, especially a lot of textual material contains a 4th grade textbook, which indicates the concretization of the speech orientation. Almost every lesson contains tasks aimed at developing coherent speech:
-what is the text, its main idea, topic and title;
- the ability to distinguish between text and a group of sentences;
- the ability to build various types of texts;
- to find various figurative means in the text;
- select paragraphs, establish a connection between them and heading, etc.
Lessons are given to work on presentations, as the ability to write someone else's text, according to a plan and compositions, as well as the ability to write down one's own text with preliminary preparation.
At first, children are invited to first work on the text - samples, which are often accompanied by plot drawings, so that students can figuratively present the information they read, and, therefore, they contribute to a better memorization of the information contained in these texts.
Great help to the teacher is provided by various dictionaries, which are presented in textbooks. A student can use a dictionary when getting acquainted with any topic.
Thus, the textbooks contribute to the formation of students' language competence, the work is purposefully structured, carried out in a system, a lot of material has been selected to improve language education in children.
The textbooks from the "Free mind" series are an integral part of a set of textbooks and subject programs for continuous courses that implement the educational program "School 2100". Here the principles of this educational concept are organically combined: scientific, systematic, promising, accessible, exciting. This approach to learning creates a need for students to learn.
One of the main directions of the training course "English Language" is not just mastering the written language, but the culture of written communication. Therefore, large thematic blocks, such as a word, a sentence and a text, are included in the training sections of each material. The section "Development of speech" is not singled out as a separate one, but it is cross-cutting in all thematic blocks and is expressed as follows:
- enrichment of students' vocabulary in the course of working with a word, getting to know its lexical meaning, working with cognate words, selecting synonyms and antonyms, working with dictionary entries;
- work on a sentence, on the connection of words in a sentence, the construction of a simple and complex sentence, as well as a sentence that is complicated by homogeneous members, work with direct speech;
-work on the development of written speech, compiling free and assigned essays on a specific topic.
The goals of the English language lessons are identified by the authors as follows:
1) to form elementary linguistic skills;
2) master the written language, the culture of written communication (of course, along with the development of reading, speaking and listening skills);
3) get acquainted with the main features of the proposal, text; be able to correctly build a text from sentences, and a sentence from words, as well as correctly draw up a sentence and text in a letter;
4) lay the foundation for the formation of a functionally literate personality, ensure the language and speech development of the child.
Acquaintance with such a section as "Spelling" is aimed at laying the foundations of literate writing in children, giving them an idea that it is important to know the language not only in oral, but also in writing. Good writing skills are the key to successful written communication. This section contains the following tasks: check cheating, compiling and writing sentences according to schemes, compiling and writing sentences from words, or editing deformed text.
When studying the topic “Text”, exercises are performed: selecting a title and determining the topic of the text, highlighting parts of the text and drawing up a plan, working with fefformed texts. Compilation of texts from the proposed words, for example, such a task:
Compose textusing the words in it: station, trolleybus, tram, passenger, Anna. Write down the resulting text, highlight familiar spellings in it. Exercises of this type help to consolidate the topics: "Word", "Sentence", "Text", develop oral and written speech, work on the development of calligraphic skills.
Practically all the proposed tasks can be divided into different levels of difficulty, and each student can choose the necessary step for himself.
Thus, the English language training programs of the authors R.N. Buneeva and T.G. Ramzaeva, pay great attention to the formation of the language competence of younger students. The content of textbooks is built on the principle: first, work on the development of oral speech, and then writing. And as we have noticed, this program involves work on the development of written speech in the process of working on essays and presentations. The author's program has its own distinctive features for the purposes of education, and therefore in the methods of education. The course of teaching the English language by this author is continuously connected with the course of teaching literary reading. Thus, this program has a clearly expressed practical orientation.