1. Функциональная направленность объяснения и тренировки

Presentation (объяснение), practice (тренировка), performance (речевая практика).

1. Functionally oriented presentation and practice

As to practice, it means that we are supposed to teach to speak a foreign language by making students speaking, to read by reading, to write by writing.

As to presentation, the way we explain grammar or vocabulary depends on the purpose of teaching. (Do we teach to understand grammar and vocabulary or to use it in your own utterance) In order to understand what we hear or read we must proceed from the form to the meaning and when we teach to use the material in speaking or writing we proceed from the meaning to the form. And these 2 directions enrich one another. We get a more comprehensive picture.

E.g. light светлый «легкий» легкий = по весу

легкий легкий = нетрудный

As to performance we develop functional skills.

1. From form to meaning

Have

1. He has a+N = у него есть

2. He has + V₂ (written) = Он написал

3. He has to V =Ему приходится, он вынужден

4. He has his N + V₃ (He has his hair cut) = Его стригут

5. He has + V₃ + N (He has published works = either «Он опубликовал/ Ему приходилось опубликовывать работы» or «У него есть опубликованные труды»)

2. From meaning to form

Пожалуйста

1. Просьба = please

2. Разрешение = May I use your pen? – You are welcome. (Here you are. By all means)

3. Спасибо – Пожалуйста = You are welcome (Not at all. The pleasure is mine. Don’t mention it)

2. Interrelation of the major skills

Reading, listening, speaking and writing are connected by

• The same mechanisms of speech: e.g. operational memory, anticipation

• Common basic and functional skills (the skill of paraphrasing, which we need to sum up the text, to make sure we understand the speaker correctly, to avoid monotony in speech)

• Common intellectual operations (selection, transformation, re-arrangement)

A lesson usually involves either all the forms or at least most of the major skills. In such a way that one major skill is the central goal, purpose, aim and the others help to develop the target major skill.

This principle to some extent refutes the principle of functionally based practice because it says ‘we do teach to speak by speaking, but we teach mainly by speaking and also by writing’.

3. Interaction

It is very close to communication but they are not identical. Interaction occurs when the task is an activity which can not be successfully performed unless each member of the team contributes to it. Even a dialogue is not always truly interactive (when the slower student lets the other invent his lines and then voices them)

Truly interactive tasks:

• Polling (опрос общественного мнения)

• A story composed together.

• Every student is asked to write 3 sentences with one structure, then they are divided into teams – acquaint yourself with your abilities and decide what business you can start together.

• A line on the blackboard – inventions in a chronological order

Even when you make, invent, develop exercises for you students, make sure that even a very short dialogue given chiefly for practice should involve interaction.

- Why doesn’t someone do something (get attention, get married, go fishing, buy vegetables)

- She/he is too adj. to do it (small, busy)

In this case students need to listen to each other!