Project Work as Interactive fl teaching

Modern school is on the way to modernize the content and learning. One step of more effective teaching process is the usage of interactive technology in the classroom. The sense of interactive technologies is that they provide for organized interaction between the students and teachers with students, providing drawing in the work all its members and promotes the strengthening of intensive engagement of students with each other and teacher communication.  Project work - is an ideal opportunity for students to use their language skills creatively. Contents of the project is based on the study of educational topics, prepared texts, and discussion of topical issues interesting to the pupil. Children learn to express their own opinion, analyze, justify, generalize. Working on the project, students acquire and develop practical skills to work with text, audio - and video materials. Students find interesting information for them, study it, enriching their vocabulary. Application of the projects in conjunction with computer technology makes it even better. The initial phase of work - writing and discussion topics, selecting materials and sources, planning the type and the form of presentation. Next will be the heaviest, the longest phase of work (project) - the collection of information with different sources to search for new knowledge and research. The last stage of presentation is presentation itself. The form of presentation may be different: issue brochures, photomontage, wallpapers, conferences and even a theatrical spectacle. Project activity allows students to serve as authors, creators, increases creativity, enhances the overall outlook, raises the level of practical knowledge of English language. Project work helps all students to work united and to share their skills and experience. Schools are a new type of cell to reveal the creative capabilities of students meeting their personal and public interests. Achieving this goal is possible if you use methods that encourage constructive ¬ critical thinking, active learning methods and technologies, and in particular the method of the projects.

Kozachyshyna Ganna (Vinnytsia)

Forming social and cultural competence of pupils by means of virtual communication

Today’s processes of globalization make the knowledge of at least one foreign language more and more important. If one studies a foreign language, he/ she should also possess a socially-cultural competence, i.e get familiar with the peculiarities of the culture of the corresponding country. The term culture means the totality of human communities, embodied in speech, intercourse, customs, traditions, norms, values, motivations, behaviour etc. Language and speech play the major role in the interrelation of the communicators in modern society.

The problem of socialization is given much attention to in the works of many scholars such as M. Birama, G. Zarat, H. Nojner, M. Fleminng and others. They claim that socialization usually happens in two spheres: objective and social. In order to be socially-culturally competent one should not only know denominations of objects and be able to name them in a foreign language, but also be ready for intercultural communication and dialogue of cultures. To know these realities and peculiarities one should work in at least an artificially created communicative situation which corresponds to or resembles a real one. This may be done (together with other means) with the help of virtual communication (e-mail, Skype, ICQ etc.) when your so called pen-friend is the resident of the corresponding country.

It must be noted that in the course of teaching a foreign language a teacher can use two approaches – monocultural and bicultural. The latter should be preferred as it promotes the development of social-cultural competence and dialogue between cultures. The usage of means of virtual communication with real communicators is one of the best and most efficient methods of teaching a foreign language as it is based on a real communicative situation and the communication between the participants here is as close to reality as possible.

Yaroslav Lavrenchuk