Pedagogy

Konovalenko Tetyana, Kotlyarova Victoriya

Melitopol State Teachers’ Training University

The Conditions of Development of Future Foreign Language Teachers’ Expressive-Communicative Skills

Annotation

The article deals with the problem of teacher’s-pupils’ communication and the expressive-communicative component of future foreign language teacher’s competence. Three pedagogical conditions of future foreign language teacher’s expressive-communicative skills development are described, as well as the ways of their practical realization.

Key words: expressive communicative skills, expressive communicative skills development, professional training of future foreign language teachers, pedagogical communication.

I. Introduction. The problem of development of future teachers’ communicative competence is rather popular among researchers because it represents the essence of such an interesting and complex phenomenon as pedagogical communication. In spite of numerous investigations in this sphere (A. Bodalyev, F. Gonobolin, I. Zimnyaya, V. Kan-Kalik, Y. Kolominskiy, N. Kuzmina, A. Leontiev, A. Rean and others) some aspects are still actual and require special attention.

Nowadays learning foreign language is organized as the process of communication, but teacher’s-pupils’ interaction is complicated with different factors or the so-called barriers. The barriers which occur in the process of teacher’s and pupils’ communication were under the investigations of such scientists as O. Berezyuk, A. Bodalyev, I. Gapiychuk, V. Grehnyev, I. Zimnyaya, V. Kan-Kalik, Y. Kolominskiy, A. Leontiev, A. Rean, I. Rydanova, T. Yatsenko (as pedagogical communication in general) and A. Alhazishvili, S. Andrushko, C. Brumfit, S. Budak, O. Faenova, S. Folomkina, E. Passov, J. Richards, Th. Rodgers, S. Ryabushko, S. Savignon, J. Sheils, I. Tatarina and others (as for teacher-pupils’ interaction in language learning, esp. foreign language). The representatives of psychological and pedagogical sciences try to find the most effective ways to realize pedagogical communication.

The whole process of communication should be built to create only positive emotions and joy of communication. Even if the pupil fails to do the task, the teacher is the first to support him or her and inspire to success. Thus we consider the expressive-communicative skills of a teacher rather important and worth investigation as they favour to revealing foreign language teachers’ creative potential. It helps them to be the authors and masters in their professional activity and that favours to the humanization of pedagogical and foreign speech communication, which is mentioned in the state documents “About Education” [2, p. 7], “National Doctrine of Development of Education in Ukraine in XXI century” [4, p. 3].

II. Formulation of the problem. The whole system of personal qualities of a teacher conditions the model of teacher-pupils’ interaction. It goes without saying that the innate qualities are difficult and often impossible to change. But according to the theory of man’s concealed reserved abilities (G. Kitaygorodskaya [3, p. 20]) any person has limitless abilities which can be revealed under the favourable circumstances. We suggested that first and foremost teacher’s expressive-communicative skills should be developed so that in his or her future professional activity he or she is sure to realize effective pedagogical interaction and avoid or overcome all the barriers.

So, we assumed that the development of future foreign language teachers’ expressive communicative skills in the process of professional training would have been more effective if such pedagogical conditions were realized: 1) the integration of basic knowledge in the sphere of professional-pedagogic and foreign speech communication; 2) the promotion of means of game modeling of didactic emotional interaction situations and dramatizing of verbal and nonverbal behaviour ways of its participants; 3) the training of pedagogical artistry functions of student in the process of pedagogical practice and extra-curricular activity.

III. The Results. As a matter of fact the difficulties appear when the young teacher tries to use his or her speech to express thoughts, to give instructions, to explain the new material. There are some problems with adequate choice of expressive means, with fluency of speech, with ability to adopt it according to the age and knowledge level of pupils.

These observations as well as the analyses of numerous literature sources on the culture of speech let us divide expressive-communicative skills into three main groups: 1) the skills to achieve the effect of attractiveness of outward appearance and inner world of the personality; 2) the skills to achieve the effect of artistic-aesthetic expressiveness of foreign speech and rhetoric competence; 3) the skills to achieve the effect of positive emotional tone of pedagogical communication and artistry in the control of produced impressions.

So, all these skills were developed in the process of realization of three pedagogical conditions. For realization of the first condition according to the dialectic principle of the unity of the general, peculiar and unique the educational material of theoretical courses (“Introduction to the Pedagogical Activity”, “Psychology”, “Pedagogy”, “The Fundamentals of Pedagogical Skills”, “Foreign Language Teaching Methodology”, “Methodology of Educational Work at School”) was systematically structured into the united subject modulus. This provided firm theoretical basis for future professional activity and students’ readiness to use it in different pedagogical situations, as well as to interpret it or improvise. Special attention was paid to pedagogical interaction and communication from the point of view of all these sciences; that helped student to create their own system of integrate knowledge in this question.

Realization of the second condition occurred within the context approach (A. Verbitskiy [1] to professional training. Practical classes of the same theoretical courses mentioned above were organized as situational learning, i.e. students were the participants of quasi-professional activity. Thus the students had the opportunity to try their competence as a teacher in microteaching or dramatizing. They could get the most important information about the three groups of expressive-communicative skills through their practical activity, which proved some ways of teaching to be effective and others not to be.

The third condition in our investigation was based on the training of pedagogical artistry functions of students in the process of pedagogical practice and extra-curricular activity. It was realized in the extra-curricular optional course “Pedagogical Artistry of Foreign Language Teacher”. The students were consulted by the trainer as for their self-improvement (personal and professional) and were the participants of the special training directed onto the development of professionally significant qualities and skills. Later on they used these qualities and skills during their school practice, for which they got special tasks and schemes for observations. To sum up the results of school practice the students defended their own projects of individual style in pedagogical communication.

IV. The Conclusion. For the first time the essence of the notion “expressive-communicative skills” of foreign language teacher was defined, the stages of their development and their structure were described. The pedagogical conditions for the development of expressive-communicative skills of foreign language teacher were defined and proved to be effective. The methodological providing of variation model of foreign language teachers’ professional training was created, its efficiency was experimentally tested taking into account the principles of intersubject connections, personality-directed and active learning. The contents of psychological and pedagogical subjects were renovated. The forms of educational-professional practical training were promoted. The special course “Pedagogical artistry of foreign language teacher” was created and experimentally tested.

There are still a lot of other questions of foreign language teachers’ expressive-communicative skills development to be investigated. As the perspective of further investigations we consider working out the complete system of future teachers’ pedagogical artistry and professionalism development.

Literature sources:

1. Вербицкий А.А. Игровые формы контекстного обучения. – М.: Знание, 1983.

2. Закон України “Про освіту” // Освіта. – К., 1996. – № 43–44 (21 серпня). – С. 6–11.

3. Китайгородская Г.А. Методические основы интенсивного обучения иностранным языкам. – М.: Изд-во МГУ, 1986.

4. Національна Доктрина розвитку освіти в Україні в ХХI столітті. – К., 2001.