Strategies of teaching english in multi-level classes contest Introduction

3.2. Usage of modern methods of teaching in primary school

As we know, nowadays good teachers need to change some ways of teaching English language under school conditions as the old-approaches and longer meet the requirements of the last year. The historic changes took place in Uzbekistan, since there have been obtained.

In analyzing the views and different approaches of foreign linguists involved in the study of teaching speaking Ive tried to give the clearer explanation to teaching speaking and learning speaking, identify key species to analyses the ways of teaching speaking and how to teach speaking in primary schools.
When we ask teachers of primary schools about their aspirations for their pupils English language abilities, speaking English with confidence is almost always at the top of their wish list. They want their pupils to read well, have a wide vocabulary and a firm understanding of English grammar, but mostly they want to hear them speak and speak with confidence and enjoyment.
I think the next will be by stories, stories provide children with a context for speaking English. This is especially valuable if they arent able to experience an immersive language-learning environment. Experiencing a story together in English places children in a small world where English is a given. The teacher as a storyteller reads a line and pauses. If the child is familiar with the story after having heard it a few times, she will be able to assume the role of storyteller.
Songs and rhymes are also effective teaching ways of teaching speaking for improving childrens speech and they give children the chance to play with spoken English in a stress-free way. By listening to songs and singing them, children begin to hear the sounds of the language and experiment with the way the mouth works to produce those new sounds. They notice relationships between words that sound similar through the rhymes at the end of the lines, and how words in combination create rhythm.
STORYTELLING. Students can briefly summarize a tale or story they heard from somebody beforehand, or they may create their own stories to tell their classmates. Story telling fosters creative thinking. It also helps students express ideas in the format of beginning, development, and ending, including the characters and setting a story has to have. Students also can tell riddles or jokes. For instance, at the very beginning of each class session, the teacher may call a few students to tell short riddles or jokes as an opening. In this way, not only will the teacher address students‟ speaking ability, but also get the attention of the class.
INTERVIEWS. Students can conduct interviews on selected topics with various people. It is a good idea that the teacher provides a rubric to students so that they know what type of questions they can ask or what path to follow, but students should prepare their own interview questions. Conducting interviews with people gives students a chance to practice their speaking ability not only in class but also outside and helps them becoming socialized. After interviews, each student can present his or her study to the class. Moreover, students can interview each other and "introduce" his or her partner to the class.
STORY COMPLETION. This is a very enjoyable, whole-class, free-speaking activity for which students sit in a circle. For this activity, a teacher starts to tell a story, but after a few sentences he or she stops narrating. Then, each student starts to narrate from the point where the previous one stopped. Each student is supposed to add from four to ten sentences. Students can add new characters, events, descriptions and so on.
REPORTING. Before coming to class, students are asked to read a newspaper or magazine and, in class, they report to their friends what they find as the most interesting news. Students can also talk about whether they have experienced anything worth telling their friends in their daily lives before class.
In our country the given textbooks for the forms of 1^st till 4^th of primary schools was published several times. The analyzed textbook Kids English compiled by S.S. Khan, L.H. Jorayev, O.N. Maksudova and other authors contains fewer exercises, which is dedicated to develop speaking and vocabulary skills of learners.
Kids English of form 1, 2 there are such lessons which belong to only oral tasks and activities, Kids English of form 3, 4 there are such lessons which belong to all language skills and other contain different exercises, reviewing tasks and questions to analyze and confirm understanding are very important in determining the speaking skill comprehension.
In order to develop an efficient pedagogical proposal it was necessary to identify the most meaningful deficiencies that teachers present or face in the classrooms when teaching the English language. We acknowledge the different and vast variety of teaching realities in primary schools, as well as a great variety of weak points that these teachers have to deal with every day.
By analyzing I came info conclusion teaching speaking in primary schools are still something of a mystery but one thing we can be sure of is that words are not instantaneously acquired at least not for adult foreign language learners.
Teaching process is mainly based on two activities. They are imparting knowledge and acquiring knowledge. In the first case teacher gives information and the learners accept it. The innovative methods also cooperate with this process and their main goal is to estimate the activities of a teacher and learners using new ways and methods of teaching including new technical means of teaching.
As we know that methodological approach in teaching foreign languages may be divided into three groups. They are Passive methods, Active methods and also interactive methods.
If we speak about the passive methods, it should be remarked that in Passive methods a teacher is in the center of teaching. He plays active role but the learners are passive. Control can be taken by the way of questions, individual and control work, tests etc. It may be useful when it is used by an experienced teacher.
Secondly, in Active methods learners are also active. Their role and activity is equal while interaction. Learners may ask questions; express their ideas with a teacher.
The last but it is in the first today interactive method or approach is a modernized form of active methods. The most of teachers usually understand or mean cooperative action during the lesson. But here attention should be focused on inner action too. The learners must have inner motivation which leads them into active work or active participation at the lesson. In interactive method teacher’s role is to direct learners’ activity to reach the goal of the lesson which include interactive exercises and tasks [9].
Below some types of interactive methods are given:
BRAINSTORMING. It is technique for generating new ideas on a topic. These methods stimulate creative activity of the learners in solving problems and express their ideas fluently. Several variants of solving the problem are usually given here. In brainstorming quantity of utterances is important but not the quality. Teacher should listen to all opinions and not criticize them. Instead of this he motivates the learners to give as many variants of solving the problem as he (or she) can. Lacks of criticism gives an opportunity for favorable conditions for the learners to express the ideas freely and these of course encourages them. At the end of brainstorming activity all the expressed statements are written and then analyzed.
DISCUSSION. This type of interactive method refers to study teaching material on the theme before beginning the discussion. After having learnt the lexico-grammatical material on the theme the learners may start discussion. This method helps the learners consistently and logically express their ideas by presenting grounds for their utterances. Here the learners engage in small groups and this develops their activity because every member of the group may express his/her ideas and takes part in the discussion.
The forms of organizing group work are the following:
1. A theme is selected (chosen);
2. Learners must have learnt the chosen problem;
3. Groups are formed;
4. Teacher gives instruction and announces the time;
5. Controls the activity of learners and if it is needed, helps and stimulated them.
6. At the end of the discussion one participation of each group makes presentation.
CLUSTER. The next innovative method is cluster. It is one of widely used methods in teaching a foreign language now. It can be used in all stages of teaching English to both young and aged learners. In presenting new words a teacher writes a new word on the blackboard. And then learners tell the words that can be associated with the given word. For ex.: Then students will be given a task to make up word combinations with the word “book”: my book, a good book, an interesting book, a nice book, etc.
This method involves all the learners into active work and forms of motivation. It can be effectively used in improving monologic speech habits and skills.
ROLE PLAYING. Role playing is also one of the activity used in teaching innovative methods. They are made to improve the efficiency of teaching. Role playing involves the learners into active work by positively influencing on their inner activity. This creates favorable conditions for cooperative work. This kind of atmosphere creates their motivation, personal potentials of inner activity and helps to form practical skills and habits. During the role playing such skills as creativity, getting out of the difficult situations, resourcefulness, self-managing is formed and improved. Role playing has not only educational aim, but also has social aims because some life situation is modeled here for teaching. When a teacher uses role playing method in teaching the foreign language he/she should follow the below given instructions:
1. Creating friendly atmosphere among the learners who take part in the play;
2. Learners should feel free themselves and this will help them to play their role perfectly;
3. Creating favorable conditions in the teaching process and using pros;
4. Taking into consideration the personal features of the learners.
Multimedia learning. This is the next innovative method. It is the combination of various media types as text, audio and video materials by the help of which teacher provides information to the learners. By using information technology as an innovative teaching and learning strategy in a problem based learning teacher tries to motivate learners to active knowledge through real life problems. Advantages of using multimedia learning: Positively effects on forming speech habits and skills.
An effective conclusion retraces the important elements of the lesson and relates them to the objective. This review and wrap-up of ideas reinforces student learning and develops the conservation of what has been learned. New ideas should not be given in the conclusion because at this point they are likely to confuse the students
Teaching involves an opened-minded plan for helping students meet and reach educational goals. Teaching styles may differ from teacher to teacher, class to class and school to school. Yet every teaching objective must include a structured but flexible process for student advancement.
Interactive teaching styles contain a multitude of goals beneath a single roof. Interactive classes are designed around a simple principle: Without practical application, students often fail to comprehend the depths of the study material. Interactive training styles provide four basic forms of feedback:
Measurable student accomplishments -teachers making use of interactive teaching styles are better equipped to access how well students master a given subject material.
Whereas students often lose interest during lecture-style teaching, interactive teaching styles promote an atmosphere of attention and participation. Make it interesting. Make it exciting. Make it fun. Telling is not teaching and listening is not learning.
Following guidelines to express the focus of interactive educational teaching styles:
1. Encourage student participation.
2. Use questions that stimulate response, discussion and a hands-on experience.
3. Use teaching aids that press for answers, and capture and hold the student’s attention.
4. Set up a work group environment.
5. Involve yourself as well as the student.
Here some activities that can be done in the speaking class to promote speaking [24].
SIMULATIONS. Simulations are very similar to role-plays but what makes simulations different than role plays is that they are more elaborate. In simulations, students can bring items to the class to create a realistic environment. For instance, if a student is acting as a singer, she brings a microphone to sing and so on. Role plays and simulations have many advantages. First, since they are entertaining, they motivate the students. Second, [22] suggests, they increase the self-confidence of hesitant students, because in role play and simulation activities, they will have a different role and do not have to speak for themselves, which means they do not have to take the same responsibility.
INFORMATION GAP. In this activity, students are supposed to be working in pairs. One student will have the information that other partner does not have and the partners will share their information. Information gap activities serve many purposes such as solving a problem or collecting information. Also, each partner plays an important role because the task cannot be completed if the partners do not provide the information the others need. These activities are effective because everybody has the opportunity to talk extensively in the target language.
PLAYING CARDS. In this game, students should form groups of four. Each suit will represent a topic. For instance: Diamonds: Earning money Hearts: Love and relationships Spades: An unforgettable memory Clubs: Best teacher Each student in a group will choose a card. Then, each student will write 4-5 questions about that topic to ask the other people in the group. For example: If the topic "Diamonds: Earning Money" is selected, here are some possible questions: Is money important in your life? Why? What is the easiest way of earning money? What do you think about lottery? Etc. However, the teacher should state at the very beginning of the activity that students are not allowed to prepare yes-no questions, because by saying yes or no students get little practice in spoken language production. Rather, students ask open-ended questions to each other so that they reply in complete sentences.
There are three teaching methods that dominate the business of language instruction: the Direct Method, the Grammar-Translation Method, and the Audio-Lingual Method. Deciding which is the best method is difficult because each has strengths and weaknesses, and the nature of a student’s goals will determine which is best for that student. Although many language-training sources may speak about exclusive or unique approaches, with few exceptions they are using one of these three methods. We conducted extensive research on the subject of teaching methods for our online language training programs. Here is a description of the three primary language teaching methods along with our analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of each one:
THE DIRECT METHOD
The Direct Method is also known as the Oral or Natural method. It’s based on the active involvement of the student in both speaking and listening to the new language in realistic everyday situations. The process consists of a gradual acquisition of grammatical structure and vocabulary. The learner is encouraged to think in the target language rather than translate. He or she hears and uses the language before seeing it written.
THE GRAMMAR-TRANSLATION METHOD
This method grew from the traditional method of teaching Latin and Greek. The method is based on analysis of the written language using translation exercises, reading comprehension and written imitation of texts. Learning mainly involves the mastery of grammatical rules and memorization of vocabulary lists.
THE AUDIO-LINGUAL METHOD
This self-teaching method is also known as the Aural-Oral method. The learning is based on repetition of dialogues and phrases about every day situations. These phrases are imitated, repeated, and drilled to make the response automatic. Reading and writing are both reinforcements of what the learner practices.
COMPARING THE LANGUAGE TRAINING METHODS
This comparison graph shows the expected results for a typical student applying the same amount of time and motivation to the learning. We scored the value of each method from 1 to 10 in the following aspects: Speed of Learning, Listening Comprehension, Speaking Capability, Writing Capability, and Grammar.
Methods Graph
The Direct Method gives the student the ability to communicate quickly because she is encouraged to be creative during practice. It gives, by far, the widest range of capability to understand what another person says to you and in developing your capability to speak. This is the method of choice for instruction with a live trainer and where speaking and listening are most important.
The Grammar-Translation method requires the learner to spend a lot of time understanding the language structure. Listening and speaking suffer because of this. Understanding the structure is helpful in reading and particularly in writing. Grammar and vocabulary are emphasized throughout. This is the method of choice when the student’s goal is to achieve a high level of writing and reading ability in a foreign language, versus speaking and listening.
The Audio-Lingual Method also allows the learner to communicate quickly but within the limited range that the repetition allows. It improves comprehension only if the speaker uses phrases that the learner has studied. Reading is limited, and an understanding of how to use the language is very limited. This is the method that is used when a live trainer is not available.
To sum up, according to many teaching theorists, speaking skill can be developed through communicative activities which include an information gap, a jigsaw puzzle, games, problem-solving, and Role-playing. In addition, supported this idea that the activities that can assist better speaking skills are free discussion and role-playing. Also, [23] stated that the language activities are important factors in teaching language for communication. Activities help create interaction in the language classroom. Additionally, communicative activities can motivate the learners and establish good relationships between the teacher and the students as well as among the students thereby encouraging a supportive environment for language learning.