Indirect questions in teaching grammar

2.2. Methodological basis for teaching indirect speech transmission

The main general methodological principle that determines the specifics of teaching a foreign language is the principle of communicative orientation. It is this principle that determines the main goal of learning - the formation of communication skills in the target language. Despite the fact that the topic “Explanatory constructions in indirect speech” studied in our work is more related to the grammar and syntax of the English language, in the methodology it occupies a significant place in teaching not only the grammatical aspect of the language, but also in teaching oral communication - speaking. The indirect transmission of "alien speech" is a complex speech skill, which includes a number of more private skills. The role of indirect speech transmission in natural and educational communication is quite large, it is an integral part of the skill of storytelling,
Retelling is an important teaching technique used to develop coherent speech of students at different stages of learning. The skill of storytelling implies that we can hear or visually perceive information and easily reconstruct it - retell it in our own words. The formation of this skill can take place both in conditions of natural communication and in learning conditions. Retelling jokes, anecdotes, stories, fairy tales, summarizing articles, discussing films and books, talking about current affairs involves the use of explanatory constructions in speech, as well as the use of constructions containing indirect speech. The transfer of the content of a literary text in your own words causes difficulties for students at different stages of learning. English fiction, in particular prose, full of dialogue fragments with direct speech. In home reading lessons, even when conveying the content of simple fairy tales or short stories, students need the skill of retelling with the transformation of direct speech into indirect speech, using explanatory type constructions. The volume of use of indirect speech (indirect question, command / motivation) varies and expands depending on the stage of learning and the communicative task facing students. But even with the elementary transmission of another person’s message or the expression of one’s thoughts and feelings in colloquial speech, one cannot do without constructions of an explanatory type. From the foregoing, it follows that this grammatical structure has a wide range of speech functions and is a universal structure used to develop the speech of students at different stages of learning. In home reading lessons, even when conveying the content of simple fairy tales or short stories, students need the skill of retelling with the transformation of direct speech into indirect speech, using explanatory type constructions. The volume of use of indirect speech (indirect question, command / motivation) varies and expands depending on the stage of learning and the communicative task facing students. But even with the elementary transmission of another person’s message or the expression of one’s thoughts and feelings in colloquial speech, one cannot do without constructions of an explanatory type. From the foregoing, it follows that this grammatical structure has a wide range of speech functions and is a universal structure used to develop the speech of students at different stages of learning. In home reading lessons, even when conveying the content of simple fairy tales or short stories, students need the skill of retelling with the transformation of direct speech into indirect speech, using explanatory type constructions. The volume of use of indirect speech (indirect question, command / motivation) varies and expands depending on the stage of learning and the communicative task facing students. But even with the elementary transmission of another person’s message or the expression of one’s thoughts and feelings in colloquial speech, one cannot do without constructions of an explanatory type. From the foregoing, it follows that this grammatical structure has a wide range of speech functions and is a universal structure used to develop the speech of students at different stages of learning. even when conveying the content of simple fairy tales or short stories, students need the skill of retelling with the transformation of direct speech into indirect speech, using explanatory type constructions. The volume of use of indirect speech (indirect question, command / motivation) varies and expands depending on the stage of learning and the communicative task facing students. But even with the elementary transmission of another person’s message or the expression of one’s thoughts and feelings in colloquial speech, one cannot do without constructions of an explanatory type. From the foregoing, it follows that this grammatical structure has a wide range of speech functions and is a universal structure used to develop the speech of students at different stages of learning. even when conveying the content of simple fairy tales or short stories, students need the skill of retelling with the transformation of direct speech into indirect speech, using explanatory type constructions. The volume of use of indirect speech (indirect question, command / motivation) varies and expands depending on the stage of learning and the communicative task facing students. But even with the elementary transmission of another person’s message or the expression of one’s thoughts and feelings in colloquial speech, one cannot do without constructions of an explanatory type. From the foregoing, it follows that this grammatical structure has a wide range of speech functions and is a universal structure used to develop the speech of students at different stages of learning. using constructs of explanatory type. The volume of use of indirect speech (indirect question, command / motivation) varies and expands depending on the stage of learning and the communicative task facing students. But even with the elementary transmission of another person’s message or the expression of one’s thoughts and feelings in colloquial speech, one cannot do without constructions of an explanatory type. From the foregoing, it follows that this grammatical structure has a wide range of speech functions and is a universal structure used to develop the speech of students at different stages of learning. using constructs of explanatory type. The volume of use of indirect speech (indirect question, command / motivation) varies and expands depending on the stage of learning and the communicative task facing students. But even with the elementary transmission of another person’s message or the expression of one’s thoughts and feelings in colloquial speech, one cannot do without constructions of an explanatory type. From the foregoing, it follows that this grammatical structure has a wide range of speech functions and is a universal structure used to develop the speech of students at different stages of learning. But even with the elementary transmission of another person’s message or the expression of one’s thoughts and feelings in colloquial speech, one cannot do without constructions of an explanatory type. From the foregoing, it follows that this grammatical structure has a wide range of speech functions and is a universal structure used to develop the speech of students at different stages of learning. But even with the elementary transmission of another person’s message or the expression of one’s thoughts and feelings in colloquial speech, one cannot do without constructions of an explanatory type. From the foregoing, it follows that this grammatical structure has a wide range of speech functions and is a universal structure used to develop the speech of students at different stages of learning.
Teaching speaking as a type of speech activity includes the development of dialogic and monologue speech skills and is subject to the goals and objectives set by the state standard of secondary education in a foreign language (FSES). Let us take examples of those tasks that are directly related to our constructions: constructions with indirect speech and constructions of the explanatory type.
- briefly convey the content of the information received,
- talk about facts / events,
- convey the main content of what is read or heard,
- express your attitude to what you have read/heard,
- clarify / supplement what has been said;
– build detailed messages.
Indirect speech is a rather difficult topic to master. In our opinion, in teaching the indirect transmission of someone else's speech at school at the middle and senior levels, two main stages should be distinguished: grammatical and stylistic. The main content of the grammatical stage is the formation of speech skills in the grammatical design of indirect speech. The stylistic stage includes teaching the stylistic aspect of the indirect transmission of someone else's speech, its main content is the mastery of those complex skills by students, with the help of which the narrative presentation of dialogues is given a stylistically adequate character.
The foreign language program for a general education school provides that students must not only master the grammatical topic "Indirect speech", but correctly, automatically use the studied grammatical phenomenon in oral speech. That is, teaching indirect speech should take place in stages:
- familiarization with the material,
- training and consolidation of the studied material,
- speaking out.
At school, a sufficient number of hours are devoted to mastering, consolidating the material and performing written exercises for the transformation from direct speech to indirect speech, but the last and most important stage is getting into speech, the creation of proper communicative situations is often ignored.
In our opinion, teaching indirect speech should be implemented using an explicit approach (through an explanation of the rules), since with an implicit approach, confusion may arise when the rules are independently derived from the context of use. It is important that the skill is formed in stages.
Consider the main stages of work on new grammatical material, in our case, acquaintance with the topic "Indirect speech" in the framework of secondary school:
1. Approximate preparatory stage. Introduction / explanation of the topic. Includes an initial acquaintance with the grammatical phenomenon. It is important for the teacher not only to present new grammatical material, but also to explain the scope of the grammatical construction. Important for productive work on the topic is the understanding by students of the speech function of the mastered grammatical phenomenon.
2. Choice of approach. Simple grammatical material can be introduced without theoretical explanations, using a specific situation as an example, in a practical way. In the case of introducing the topic "Indirect speech", one should combine explanations of the rules with educational activities, use the deductive method within the framework of an explicit approach, go from explaining the rules to analyzing specific examples.
In general, acquaintance with a new grammatical form should take place in the following sequence:
1. Explanation of the function of the new grammatical structure;
2. Creation of a situation typical for the functioning of a new grammatical structure;
3. Students' perception of the structure by ear or visually (in our case, visual supports are needed);
4. Control of understanding the meaning of the new grammatical structure and the correctness of its use;
5. Working out the grammatical phenomenon. Performing introductory exercises - language and conditional speech for substitution, transformation. Performing exercises for replacement, contraction, expansion and combination.
Mastering this topic in a grammatical light includes knowledge about the tense system of the English verb, understanding the difference between modal, auxiliary and semantic verbs, knowledge of modal verb substitutes. Even when performing conditional communicative exercises with the transformation of direct speech into indirect speech, students face a number of grammatical and stylistic difficulties. The difficulty is caused by a shift in time when transforming direct speech into indirect speech, a lack of vocabulary when replacing supporting verbs, when conveying the content of dialogue replicas, students often alternate only two verbs - said, answered, which makes speech scarce and monotonous. The generalizing transmission of the content of the dialogue is due to the mastery of the methods of paraphrase, expansion, clarification, preservation of text fragments, i.e. transformations in detail.
Students should implement the following recommendations when indirectly transmitting someone else's speech:
1. We consider it expedient to teach to convey the content of only those fragments that are essential for the factual chain of narration, are significant in revealing the images of heroes, explaining their actions, and generally succinctly convey the main outline of the narration. It is necessary to form a complex speech skill of a generalizing presentation of the content of someone else's speech, which is a kind of a more general storytelling skill.
2. In cases where it is necessary to indirectly convey the content of each replica, it is better to strive to exclude complex sentences with additional clauses, by translating the narrative into factual, emotional, intellectual plans.
3. If it is necessary to convey the content of a large number of alternating replicas, one should not only select synonyms for the supporting verbs of speaking, but also use other methods of bypassing indirect speech.
4. It is worth avoiding the repeated use of the union that.
When selecting exercises aimed at working out, consolidating and using grammatical structures on a given topic in speech, the teacher must take into account the general level of the group's language training and try to introduce exercises of varying complexity. In addition to drill and controlled exercises - exercises with a given execution mechanism according to a pattern or substitution, aimed at bringing the language skill to automatism, you should not ignore meaningful drill and guided exercises - training exercises that have semantic significance for students and are conditionally communicative in nature.
The main goals facing the teacher when explaining the topic "Indirect speech"
1. During the initial presentation of the material, an approach and method should be chosen and used in accordance with the level of language training of students, the peculiarities of the use of grammatical material and the pursued learning objectives.
2. It is necessary to show the diversity of speech contexts of the new grammatical structure;
3. Create conditions for student activity
4. Set specific communicative goals for students and develop the ability to convey the main content of any text containing dialogue in their own words.
The transformation of direct speech into indirect speech occurs according to certain rules. According to the rule of time coordination, when direct speech passes into indirect speech, the following time shift occurs:
Present Indefinite (> replaced by) Past Indefinite
Present Continuous > Past Continuous Present Perfect > Past Perfect
Present Perfect Continuous > Past Perfect Continuous
Past Indefinite > Past Perfect
Past Continuous > Past Perfect Continuous Past Perfect > does not change
Past Perfect Continuous > does not change
Future Future Simple > Future Simple in the Past Future Continuous > Future Continuous in the Past Future Perfect > Future Perfect in the Past
Future Perfect Continuous > Future Perfect Continuous in the Past Adverbs and temporal indications are replaced with the past tense:
now - then, today-yesterday, this day - that day, tomorrow - (the) next day, here-there, this - that, these - those, last week > the week before, last year > the year before, ago
>before etc. Since the nature of the grammatical material can cause difficulties for students to derive the formulation of the rules in context, we consider it necessary to clearly illustrate the material being studied on the board in the form of grammatical diagrams and tables.
We consider the control and correction of the acquired knowledge to be an obligatory stage for checking the assimilation of the topic covered.
Indirect speech is a voluminous topic that includes a number of subtopics. In our opinion, teaching should be carried out in grammatical blocks, introducing a new subtopic as the previous one is mastered. We consider the following division to be the most appropriate:
1. Reporting Statements. The rules of the sequence of tenses. It involves training the rules for coordinating tenses in different types of sentences.
2. Questions in reported speech.
3. Conversational patterns in reported speech.
4. Modal Verbs in reported speech.
Depending on the level of language proficiency of students, the subtopic Subjunctive mood in reported speech may be considered.
After passing the grammatical topic, it is necessary to improve the grammatical skill in all types of speech practice. The conditions for the functioning of the skill of indirect speech are constantly becoming more complicated due to the complication of speech tasks. The task of transmitting someone else's speech at the senior level at school should be set more broadly than simply mastering the grammatical norms for transmitting indirect speech. Teaching should be aimed not only at turning direct speech into indirect speech, but also at developing students' complex ability to indirectly convey someone else's speech, which includes, in addition to proper grammatical components, a number of other skills and abilities.