The purpose of learning English in high school is developing communicative competence for professional communication in the modern information environment. The main part in learning English is a text. Reading special texts is based on general principles: learning new vocabulary and special terms; training grammar structures, reference work on historical data. Reading and understanding original texts are realized through the communicative competence of intercultural communication. The material chosen for special purposes may be English – language newspapers, magazines, scientific journals, poems, fiction literature, information and reference articles, tourist booklets or advertising pamphlets. Thanks to new information technologies foreign texts are becoming more available and students of our Institute are getting opportunities of acquiring the habits of reading in the fields of culture, art and literature according to the qualifications which they are being trained in the course of the curriculum.
The students on future profession “Socio – cultural activities” pay attention to original texts describing holidays and related traditions. While reading and learning English songs, poems, proverbs and legends students realize essential elements of traditions and customs of the English – speaking countries. In conclusion, students do creative presentations in which differences and similarities of celebration public holidays and domestic customs are reflected. After reading religious articles devoted to the way of celebration Christmas and Easter in the magazine “Digest” students analyzed and pointed out the differences in celebrating these great events at different times and the customs happened of Holy Week between the Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church. In their presentations students paid attention to the fact that the most important spiritual, intellectual and psychological satisfaction of these celebrations enriched the personality and inner world of human beings. In students’ presentations and projects Easter is connected in peoples’ minds with spring, with the coming to life of the earth after winter in both religious. They mark that the most popular emblem of Easter is the Easter egg. As the students’ future profession is organizing children’s leisure they stress to the fact that Easter eggs are traditional Easter presents for children. Different kinds of eggs are presented to raise children’s mood and interest. They also discuss how Easter is celebrated in London. The capital of Great Britain greets spring with a traditional spectacular Easter parade. Much attention is paid to the students’ contribution to their presentations and projects which reveal interesting and specific features of celebrations, holidays and leisure. Students try to make such an approach to the language which is capable to render the way of life, traditions and customs of the English – speaking countries.
Using original texts encourages students to apply their knowledge and skills in specific situations for professional purposes. They organize holidays for children boarding schools and acquaint them with elements of such holidays as Christmas, Halloween, Guy Fawkes Night. Thus, the content of the texts develops students’ communicative competence and gives them the opportunity to compare the ways of spending free time in the English-speaking countries with similar phenomena in Russia.
Every year students of our Institute are involved to participate in scientific practical students’ conferences under the title “The role of the text in communicative environment”. This year students of fiction literature department were offered to make a report on the novel “Cake and Ale” by William Somerset Maugham. Before analyzing the novel students acquainted with biographies and literary career of famous British writers of the twentieth century. Giving him due for brilliance of style and a pointed ridicule of many social vices students realized his cynical attitude to snobbishness, pretence and money – worship His keen wit and power of observation afford Maugham effective means of portraying English reality. “Cakes and Ale” was considered to be one of the best novels. It represents the backstage of the literary profession. The main character is a composite portrait in which the author puts a great deal of himself. This is a typical feature of the writer who has a capacity for seeing his own role in life.
In order to achieve learning targets, to reveal the main idea, to analyze literary devices the students used some sources of vocabulary input and the necessary references. If they needed to know any abbreviations in English or the right pronunciation of unknown words they consulted different dictionaries as much as possible or searched the reference information. So, students had to take responsibility themselves for vocabulary expansion and increasing knowledge of learning English. The teachers’ role was to help them to organize this part of work and to teach them to keep their own vocabulary. We took into consideration the fact that words should be learned not in isolation but in appropriate situations. The revision of grammatical constructions and characteristics also took places regularly.
Students read the novel, revealed the main idea and analyzed a mock-serious portrait of prosperous and fashionable literary mediocrity. They made the annotation of the text with the help of the state phrases or cliché to further discussion and communication of the novel. They came to the conclusion that the character’s success had nothing to do with artistic merit, but is chiefly due to his skill in marketing and in using every kind of publicity. Students were paid attention that the author’s style was clear-cut and elegant. The composition of the main hero deserved special attitude. We maintained students’ interest and their own creativity with the help of different teaching methods. After the description of the character’s background, education and appearance the writer presents a sketch of literary career in a serious of paragraphs. One of the paragraphs was translated in the written form by all the students of our Institute. They tried to do their best to give a narration which was subtly blended with the reported speech between the hero and other people who came into contact with him. Students had a vivid opportunity to translate the original text contained lexical and grammatical peculiarities.
As the teachers of the English language consider that the original text is a central element of the disciple “English language” and the object of linguistic research we involve students into the intercultural communication of the foreign language. Students’ scientific practical conferences under the title “The literary text in the space of intercultural communication” are aimed at this task. The preparation work for the conference is always based on the situational approach and discussion of the problem issues and analyses of the author’s style and devices. So, the students who made a report are able to define the main idea, to present literary and stylistic devices of the text, to prove their ideas by facts and to make a conclusion. The creative ability gave students a possibility to communicate on the foreign language and to compare the problems of the text with a contemporary reality. At the final stage of the report students demonstrated their communicative and professional competence. They formulated some urgent and important questions: to be honest or successful; to work hard or to create one’s own career.
At the end of the conference all the students agreed that this Maugham’s story was a sharp and amusing portrait with a feel of a rational discussion of what success meant in the literary world of the author’s time. The discussion was a great motivation for the students’ professional competence in the sphere of literature. They marked a delicious satire of the author and his sense of irony to show hypocrisy of his hero and literary society in that period of time.
While reading original texts much work has been done on characterizing authors’ skills in using literary devices of the language to serve some special purpose. According to characters’ outlook students can be able to resume the proper problems which authors try to reveal in their stories. Work of the text on future profession does not stop during the whole course of learning English in higher school. The system of productive exercises and tasks includes training vocabulary, identifying the suitable information in the connection to the mentioned facts, defining ideas and problems and making annotations which are followed by conclusions, discussions and comparison with modern reality.
All the chosen texts are intended on developing and increasing communicative competence in relationship with their ability to communicate in the contemporary professional environment. Thus, communicative tasks are built taking into account the linguistic knowledge and skills of students in different aspect of language education. The original professionally oriented texts promote a better understanding of the English language and maintain interest in the core subjects of future professions of our Institute.
Literature:
- Holliday A., Hyde M., Kullman J. Intercultural Communication. An advanced Resource Book. Routledge, NY, 2004. – 250 p.
- Levelt W.J.W. Lexical Access in Speech Production. – Oxford: Blackwell, 1993.
- Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. – Pearson Education Limited. – 2003. – 1950 p.[schema type=»book» name=»THE CHIEF CRITERIA IN SELECTING ORIGINAL TEXTS FOR INCREASING COMMUNICATIVE AND PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCE IN LEARNING ENGLISH IN HIGHER SCHOOL.» description=»The article is aimed at problems of training professional oriented English in a modern educational process. Reading special texts is the way of improving students’ reading skills and increasing their proficiency. The article discusses chief criteria of communicative and proficient competence in learning English. The author researches teaching methods of using professional oriented English in educational environment.» author=»Popolzina Luybov Petrovna» publisher=»БАСАРАНОВИЧ ЕКАТЕРИНА» pubdate=»2017-01-17″ edition=»ЕВРАЗИЙСКИЙ СОЮЗ УЧЕНЫХ_30.10.16_31(2)» ebook=»yes» ]