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Pochynok L. ²., Zabolotnyi Ê. F.
Bucovinian State Medical
University
OPTIMIZING THE EDUCATIONAL PROCESS
AS AN IMPORTANT MEANS IN EFFICIENT TEACHING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
The idea of
optimizing takes into account the requirements of the philosophical category of
proportion. Without adhering to a sense of proportion while using one or
another method, means, ways of teaching, forms of the organization of teaching, hyperbolization or an
underestimation of those or other components of the teaching process takes place and it becomes non-optimal for corresponding conditions. Therefore,
systematization, specific character and proportion make up three most important
methods of logical substantiations of optimization.
In order to
organize an optimal process of teaching it is necessary to have a profound
knowledge of its principal forms, regularities and principles of its adequate
functioning, possess a technique of choosing optimal decisions. In search of new
forms of teaching the idea of optimizing the procedure of teaching has become
one of the leading ones.
The essence of the
process of optimization consists in discovering the extremum or a choice of the
optimal variant out of enormous quantity of possible variants. The very notion
“the process of optimization“ implies a choice and realization of a system of
measures enabling an educational specialist to obtain any, not merely good or
better than before results, but the highest possible ones for specific
conditions, without overworking both a teacher and a student over an allotted
term of education in conformity with a set goal. To identify the notion “optimal“
with the notion “rational“, “updated“, “modernized“, “ideal“, “effective“,
“intensive“, as it sometimes happens in methodological literature, is
inadmissible.
Optimization is a
phenomenon qualitatively distinctive from all others and envisages an increase
in efficiency not by any means, but by the most advantageous complex of means
for a specific situation. As distinct from all other notions mentioned above
optimization envisages without fail the presence of criteria owing to which
optimality of achieved results is established.
Since “optimal“ means “the best from the
point of view of certain criteria“, it is necessary to determine precise
specific criteria owing to which optimality of the system of the means of
teaching or education proposed will be evaluated. Such optimization criteria
may be:
1)
maximally possible results in developing knowledge abilities, skills,
one or another feature of an individual;
2)
minimum time necessary for students and teachers to achieve certain
results;
3) minimally necessary
efforts of both students and teachers to achieve certain results over an allotted
period of time;
4) minimum number of
methods as compared with the typical ones to achieve certain results over an
allotted period of time;
There aren’t any particular
criteria of optimality which would always meet the requirements of every
teacher. It is possible to optimize the teaching procedure according to one or
two of these criteria, let’s assume, through maximally possible result and
minimally necessary time spent by students.
Efficacy and
quality of solving teaching-educative tasks, as well as the expense of time and
efforts of both educationalists and students, for their solution should be
regarded as the most important criteria of optimality of the teaching process
under the conditions of a higher school.
At the present
stage of teaching a foreign language the process of optimization is based on
the following principles: communicative orientation; oral principles of
teaching; situational-thematic organization; intensification of the teaching
process; a differentiated approach to teaching types of speech activity.
The principle of
communicativeness is the leading one, when teaching a foreign language. The
attention of both an instructor and a student should be concentrated on forming
skills of using lexical and grammatical structures in conventional or real
situations, in other words, the entire language material should be learnt through
communication, and a dialogue between a teacher and a student is founded on the
basis of students’ life experience, their counterparts of the same age abroad,
in situations connected with the country’s history, its contemporaneity. The
closer an educational situation to reality is, the more actively students enter
into a conversational intercourse. The principle of an approach to foreign
language teaching based on oral speech predomination envisages an activation of
selected educational material. Firstly, in oral form (listening comprehension,
speaking) and later on in reading and writing. Thus, this approach guarantees a
mastery of all types of speech activity in the following succession: listening
comprehension –– speaking –– reading.
The principle of a
differentiated approach in teaching is implemented via an increasing level of
the difficulty of exercises, while teaching listening comprehension. Mastering
the skills of communication is implemented in class in the forms of a dialogic
and monologic intercourse. The principal task in reading is forming habits and
skills of reading and comprehending an unknown text, reading aloud being one of
the teaching techniques.
The principle of a
situational-thematic organization of the spoken material envisages its
selection and distribution for learning and mastering under the conditions
maximally approximated to real ones. The types of utterances are stipulated by
certain situations, interlocutors’ interrelations being revealed therein. The
character of a situation (the place, time, subject of the conversation, the
form of communication, the type of speech information) influences on the choice
of speech units, therefore a situational-thematic organization of the teaching
material is one of the essential manifestations of the principle of communication.
The principle of
intensification of the teaching procedure consists in raising the productivity
of work in class. Intensification is attained via combining an individual,
paired, group, choral types of work, the use of the distributing material, a
wide use of the handout, technical teaching aids and the elements of
programming. The teacher is able to construct an optimal version out of those
available, selecting separate parts or elements, or combining them.
Mastering the
technique of optimal organization of the teaching process or its parts develops
a teacher’s creativity without fail. From the positions of optimization the first
step of a teacher, when planning a class, is acquiring the skill to see
different variants of solving one or another task, irrespective of concrete
conditions.
The next step is
choosing the best one of them in accordance with the personality features of a
teacher, specific characteristics of an academic group and other specific
conditions.
Such a choice is a
creative operation, and it itself is the basis of optimization of the teaching
process. A selection of the most adequate teaching methods for a specific class
is one of the central points of optimizing the teaching procedure.