Theoretical foundations of teaching foreign languages

Principles of teaching foreign languages.

The content of teaching foreign languages, which has been and is traditionally under the close attention of both didactics and methodologists, is understood as a category that pedagogically interprets the goal of teaching foreign languages.

The content of training is the totality of what students must master so that the quality and level of their proficiency in the language being studied correspond to the tasks of the given educational institution (Lapidus B.A.).
The content of teaching foreign languages ​​in philological education in secondary school realizes its main goals, aimed at developing a culture of communication in schoolchildren in the process of forming all components of foreign language communicative competence. These competencies involve the formation of both purely linguistic skills (lexical, phonetic and grammatical), and their normative use in oral and written speech. The proposed topics, texts, problems, speech tasks are focused on the formation of various types of speech activity (speaking, reading, listening, writing), the development of sociocultural skills and abilities, which ensures the use of foreign language as a means of communication, education and self-education, a tool of cooperation and interaction in modern the world¹⁰.
The content and structure of the school course on foreign language is determined by:
- communicative goals and objectives of the school course on foreign language;
- the variability of the content of learning FL in different types of schools, when studying the first and subsequent FL;
- the amount of study time allocated for the study of FL;
- the age characteristics of schoolchildren at each of the stages of learning FL
- continuity between the stages of training;
- interdisciplinary connections with other subjects, including the native and state languages¹¹.
Component composition of the content of teaching a foreign language
If the goal is a multidimensional education, then the content with the help of which this goal is achieved cannot but be multicomponent. Modern domestic and foreign researchers consider it not as a static, but as a constantly evolving category, which reflects both the subject aspect and the procedural one. The first aspect relates, as a rule, to a variety of knowledge involved in the process of teaching a subject. The second aspect is the actual skills and abilities to use the acquired knowledge in order to carry out oral and / or written communication. These components (knowledge, skills and abilities) are most often found in different authors. At the same time, in the theory of teaching foreign languages, there is still no single point of view on the problem of the component composition of the content of teaching foreign languages.
The followers of G.V. Rogova's school distinguish 3 components of the content of education:
- linguistic;
- psychological;
- methodological.
The linguistic component of the content of teaching a foreign language involves the selection of the necessary material: 1) linguistic (lexical, grammatical, phonetic); 2) speech; 3) sociocultural.
As noted by the researchers, the following factors are at the heart of the material selection criteria:
- the expected context of the trainees' activities, their real requests, interests and needs;
- age;
- general level of education;
- the level of language proficiency.
The psychological component of the content of teaching foreign languages ​​is designed to determine the skills and abilities that should be formed in the learning process at this particular stage and in relation to these specific conditions.
The essence of the methodological component of the content of training comes down to the fact that in the learning process the teacher not only explains new material and organizes its correct development, but also offers his students certain algorithms for completing tasks, teaches them basic techniques of independent work, and, if necessary, provides them with reminders on rational performance of certain tasks or types of work.
Since teaching a foreign language involves the formation of the necessary linguistic, speech and socio-cultural competence, the concept of the methodological component of the content of teaching various aspects of the language and types of speech activity includes teaching various techniques for working with vocabulary, grammar, phonetics, various types of dictionaries and reference books, as well as working techniques with text.
The most common point of view among methodologists (I.L.Bim, E.I. Passov, N.D. Galskova, etc.) is the point of view on the content of teaching foreign languages ​​based on the general pedagogical interpretation of this category, which includes knowledge about the world, experience in implementing methods of activity, the experience of creative activity, as well as the experience of an emotional relationship to objects of reality, gained in the learning process (see: Lerner I.Ya., 1989).
According to this point of view, the content of training includes the following main components:
- spheres of communicative activity, themes, situations and programs of their deployment, communicative and social roles, speech actions and speech material (texts, speech samples, etc.);
- linguistic material, rules for its design and skills in operating them;
- a set of special (speech) skills that characterize the level of practical mastery of a foreign language as a means of communication, including in intercultural situations;
- a system of knowledge of the national and cultural characteristics and realities of the country of the studied language, a minimum of etiquette-conventional forms of speech and the ability to use them in various spheres of speech communication;
- educational and compensatory (adaptive) skills, rational methods of mental labor, providing a culture of language acquisition in educational conditions and a culture of communication with its speakers.