Approaching speaking test practice as easy way of pedagogical experiment penetrating through

The system of effective testing of students is alive and fruitful space of teaching foreign language speaking in a comfortable space of understandable, desirable and interesting approaching speaking tests‘ module, recognized by them as steps to the language perfection. It is a good contribution to personal and group intellectual, professional, social and cultural training, contributing to modern society and individual needs’ demands.

Аннотация статьи
testing
status of foreign language
criteria of development
essential materials
sufficient practice
motivation
teaching methods and techniques
pedagogical experiment
effectiveness of training measuring
following discussion
individual mini-presentation
targeted research and development methods
Ключевые слова

Pedagogical experiment in foreign language studies is a fruitful and rational sphere and productive educational space for successful penetrating through achievable objectives like Speaking Practice, taking small steps for success and confidence. Often the “big objectives (to become a highly-skilled foreign language speaker – are too distant to make sense to a speaker – beginner. That is why the very Experiment , including a lot of tasks and involving many participants motivates the students to learn the main principles of communication and overcoming “spoken obstacles” on the way to learning the main principles of oral speech, to read a lot, to think a lot, to enjoy the very process of learning foreign language.

In the process of pedagogical experiment’ procedure there is a wise leader – a teacher, monitoring and regulating the whole process, and responsible and reliable students, leaders of some team-groups, able to accordingly react to all educational and communicative tasks and contribute to solving the problems, making decisions, correct and comparatively exact estimation of results of the teams’ presentation.

The teacher in an experiment is “the leader who is also a process. The group’ s process and the leader’s process unfold in the same way, according to the same principle. The leader knows how to have a profound influence without making things happen” [1, p. 115].

The teacher needs to be able to choose wisely among many options that are presented in the professional literature accordingly to pedagogical experiment on spoken skills learning-teaching and to know why we think concrete “these” choices are best. In one link with the students the teachers are open to new ideas that lead to professional growth and positive change.

In order to foresee and then to make the results of the pedagogical experiment maximally expected, a teacher assists interested in group-team classroom learning speaking skills students - to clarify their own beliefs about language speaking. The scheme of the process includes three main stages. The first one is reading and discussing two different texts in the frame of group teams’ working separately. The key-question of the collective work as discussion-process is definition of a key-question of the text, the author’s conception, the personal vision of the main idea as the author’s influence the mind and feelings of the readers. When all team-groups are ready to speak on the text, collective and personal discussion starts up. This is the second stage of the group work. The participants are maximally detailed and expressive tell about their texts and their own attitude to them. And be enough interesting and correct in their oral speech to motivate the friendly command to know more about they had heard while teams discussion. The third one is command-competition of the groups’ leaders, speaking directly to the questions point, supposed by teacher as should be answered in a manner of matrix. Here are two texts offered as a module for training speaking skills after series of preliminary reading and translating-actions.

-------The first one is: “Charles Swindoll about Attitude as A Whole.”

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company…A church…A home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past…We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is Life. Life is out attitude – 10 % what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you. We all are in charge of our Attitudes.”

--------The second one is: “Once Man Had A Dream”.

He dreamed he was walking along the beach with the LORD. Across the sky flashed scenes from his life. For each scene he noticed two sets of footprints in the sand, one belonged to him, and the others to LORD. When the last scene of his life flashed before him, he looked back at the footprints in the sand. He noticed many times along the path of life there was only one set of footprints. He also noticed that it happened at the very lowest and saddest times in his life. This really bothered him and he questioned the LORD about it.” LORD, you said that once I decided to follow you, you would walk with me all the way. But I have noticed that during the most troublesome times in my life, there is only one set of footprints. I don’t understand why when I needed you most you would leave me.” The LORD replied: “My precious, precious child, I love you and I would never leave you. During your times of total suffering, when you saw only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you” [2, p. 51].

The aim of alive discussion is to arise the best feelings and intellectual and emotional reserves of students’ personalities, like sense of power, feeling important, feeling valued, feeling respected, successful and unique, maintaining one’s integrity, being assertive, being self-disciplined, having self-defined goals, feeling useful, capable of influencing others; feeling in control of one’s life, being able to accept praise and criticism, being able to give and receive; feeling useful, feeling connected, feeling competent to make decisions, feeling safe, feeling proud, feeling trusted/ trustworthy. One of the main qualities required is “being able to act independently and interdependently”, what is one of the key-goals of productive communication as a whole attitude, process and conception [3, p. 12].

The Practice Speaking e tests we divided into three groups: 1). Interview; 2). Individual mini-presentation; 3). Discussion. The students practised answering these questions as Approaching speaking ability and readiness to effective training they wanted to receive. There are some of questions, illustrating the Approaching speaking itself:

  • Express personal opinions, focus on factual, personal information;
  • Try to give more than just basic answers, and give examples to show what you mean;
  • What impact does technology of Speaking learning have on your study-process?
  • You choose one or three topics and have one minute to prepare your ideas. In this time make brief notes to give you a structure and some key words;
  • When you talk, make the structure clear; for example by giving a brief introduction and conclusion, and using linking words and phrases to introduce each section;
  • Remember that you are being tested on your ability to speak in English, not on your knowledge of specific areas of your activity (business), so if you don’t know much about a topic, just say what you can about it;
  • The organization you study and work for plans to review the training. It currently provides for staff and to make improvements. You are part of the team that have been appointed to contribute to the review as an expected result of the final stage of the experiment;
  • Discuss and decide together:

– How to evaluate the training speaking skills currently provided;

– How to set about meeting training needs;

– How can the effectiveness of training speaking skills be measured? [4, p. 25].

Pedagogical experiment gives us certainty, good change influence, definition of learning-teaching job, degree of freedom while communication, expressive game theory, and as a result- pedagogical concept of training speaking language concept of quality. The students get opportunity of creating of their own achievements, that contributes to motivation development and self-realization in image of a future competent specialist in a chosen sphere of professional activity due to the English language speaking skills.

Текст статьи
  1. Heider J. The TAO of leadership. The USA, Atlanta, 1997, p. 115.
  2. Teutsch J.M., Teutsch C.K. From Here to greater Happiness or How to change your Life for good. The USA, 1998, p. 51.
  3. Azarenkova M.I. Food for thought and energy for living. Saint-Petersburg, 2004, p.12.
  4. Undergraduate program. Test cracker. Saint-Petersburg, 2018, p. 25.
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