4.2. General considerations of integrated, or interactive, teaching

By language areas in methodology they mean speaking, reading, writing and listening comprehension. Language areas present four types of speech ac­tivity in which the foreign language is used as a means of communication.

Language elements are grammar, phonetics and lexis (vocabulary ). Infor­mation on grammar, phonetics and lexis is presented in special text-books, dictionaries or reference books. In them the foreign language is presented as a linguistic discipline.

It is evident that in order to use the English language as a means of com­munication, i.e. forgetting information by means of reading, speaking, writ­ing and listening comprehension, one should know a great lot of words, be sure what words to use to express certain meaning, acquire a sense of com-binability of words, etc. Grammatical accuracy of speech and accuracy in pronunciation are also of considerable importance. That's why it's clear that teaching English is to be started with studying foreign language elements in order learners could achieve correctness in speech.

On the other hand, it turns out that in most cases students, who had been taught grammar, phonetics and lexis and achieved accuracy of speech in class­room context, couldn't speak fluently or understand speech in real-life situa­tions. It persuades us that it is language areas which are to be studied first.

Thus one can see two contradictory points of view. It means that the ques­tion what teaching of the foreign language is to be started with is of highly problematic character.

Since the 1980s we have witnessed a gradual movement away from rather narrow language teaching methods toward broader integrated approaches that encourage the teaching of all four language skills (speaking, reading, writing and listening comprehension) and all three elements (grammar, phonetics and vocabulary) within the general framework of using language for fluent communication as well as for accuracy of speech [27, 303].

Nowadays representatives of all methods and approaches have arrived at the conclusion that in class-room context teaching language elements and teaching language areas are to be interactive (integrated) and support each other in teaching foreign language speech interaction.

Interactive, or integrated, teaching foreign languages is a kind of teaching in which learners' activities to master language areas and their activities to master language elements are not separated from each other, but, on the contrary, present a process of parallel simultaneous interrelated mastering of speaking, reading, writ­ing, listening comprehension, grammar, lexis and pronunciation on the language material of one and the same meaningful contents and through polyfunctional se­quences of tasks.

The system of polyfunctional tasks provides learners with solving their commu­nicative tasks (express doubt, hesitation, ask for information etc.) and use corre­sponding vocabulary and grammatical structures, i.e. provides both language input and productive output of speaking skills. Special attention is paid to multiple transi­tions from exercises aimed at forming speech habits to those aimed at developing speech skills f 15, 15; 16, 8; 46, 21; 56, 9; 69, 216].

Monofunctional sequences of tasks, in contrast to polyfunctional sequences of tasks, include sets of tasks for studying one language area or one language ele­ment only, e.g.: sets of tasks for studying grammatical structures only or sets of tasks for mastering reading only or those for mastering vocabulary etc. [69, 217|.

The principle of integrative, or integrated, teaching is one of the princi­ples of the Communicative Approach. During the 20-th century it was ap­plied only to teaching oral communication which was the main aim of Com­municative Methods.

To teaching reading, writing and listening comprehension the Communi­cative Approach was applied in a rather limited way and the Integrative Ap­proach was used even less. Nevertheless, speech interaction is realized not only through oral communication, but also through other language skills: reading, writing and listening comprehension.

Moreover, it is the Integrative Approach through which it is possible to realize in teaching one of the most important peculiarities of speech. This peculiarity consists in people's constant and unhampered shifting from one type of speech activity to the other: from speaking to listening, from writing to reading and the tike [54,6; 25, 121]. And to form this peculiarity in students' speech in the foreign language it is necessary to implement the Integrative Approach in teaching.

Among well-known techniques of the first-time presentation of language items are translation, sound imitation and repetition, introduction of rules, visual presentation, explanation of ways of articulation, comprehensible in­put, presentation of words through graphical images, presentation them in a situations etc. Traditionally in a great lot of text-books they are used sepa­rately from each other, which doesn't always yield fruitful results.

In interactive, or integrated, teaching all the techniques enumerated are integrated with each other to be used as a single methodological means of natural and unhampered shifting from one language skill to the others, from one language element to the others, which is fairly typical of natural speech as such and leads to a better assimilation of a language item.

Thus, it can be stated that teaching speech in the foreign language is to be necessarily based on the principles and methodological techniques of inter­active, or integrated, teaching.