3.1.4. Tasks and Drills Topical of the 1930s and 1970s
In most of the methods created between the 1930s and 1970s there were used either dialogues given orally or in written and the drills like those below. Most of them are taken from the book by Richards J. C. and Rodgers T. S. [82,31-44].
/. Listen to the utterance. Repeat it aloud as soon as you hear it. Repeating it for the second time add a few words to show you've understood it, e. g.: I haven't yet seen the film — I haven't yet seen the film, because I'm busy.
2. Listen to the utterance .Repeat it changing the grammatical form of one of the words ,e. g.:
I met them in the street two days ago. — I met him in the street two days ago.
3. Listen to the utterance. Repeat it replacing one of the nouns with a personal pronoun, e. g.
Helen left early. — She left early.
4±_Listen to the utterance. Repeat it addressing the utterance to the person mentioned e. g. Ask John when he began. — John, when did you begin?
5. Listen to the utterance. When repeating it complete it with a proper word, e.g.
I'll go my way and you go.... — I'll go my way and you go yours.
6. Read (or listen to ) the utterance and when repeating it put the word given in brackets into its proper place, e. g.
I know him. (hardly ) — / hardly know him.
7. Read (or listen to) the utterance and when repeating shorten it, use a word instead of a phrase, e. g.:
Put your hand on the table. — Put your hand on it.
8. Transform the sentence making it negative or interrogative or through changes in tense, mood, voice, aspect or modality, e. g.
He knows my address. — He doesn't know my address. If he had known my address then....
9. Integrate two separate sentences into one, e. g.
They must be honest. This is important. — It is important that they must be
Make an appropriate rejoinder to a given utterance, e. g. Thank you. — You are welcome.
Restore the sentence to its original form, e. g.
Students/ waiting/ bus — The students are waiting for a bus.
The methods developed from the 30-ies till the 70-ies of the 20-th century were considered different, "new", or "innovative" [1,13], however all of them made focus on accuracy which is achieved through drills and practice in grammatical structures and sentence patterns. Most of the drills were mechanistic in which grammar was taught by lexical means, e.g.:
Read and remember:
I want him to come today.
They want me to show a new film to them.
A
ll
the tasks and drills typical of the 1930s and 1970s really work and
are worth using only at the level of developing speaking and writing
speech -abits.
3.2. Communicative methods
By the late 1960s it was clear that foreign language learners were not able :o use speech spontaneously being trained only in language accuracy, situ-2:ional predictions and sentence patterns. The dissatisfaction by the methods
of teaching foreign languages used by the 1970-s resulted in the necessity of creating a new method of teaching. The main requirement for the method was as follows: students must to be taught so that they could actualize their linguistic competence in various conditions of speech communication in any country of the European Union [27, 105]. It was the time when the European Common Market spread to all European countries. And a decision was taken to elaborate such a method which would answer the plurilingual character of all countries of the European Union.
The methods which were worked out later to achieve the goal formulated were called Communicative Methods. The central methodological notion of these methods is "foreign language communicative competence of the learner". The term "speech competence" was first suggested by the prominent American linguist N.Chomsky. By speech competence he meant language knowledge in contrast to speech performance which he defined as the ability of a person to create individual and unique sentences [57. 325].
Methodologists united these two fundamental characteristics of speech mechanisms and started elaborating the ways to embody this functional and communicative potential of the language in methods of teaching foreign languages [18, 45]. Thus the Communicative Approach to teaching foreign languages appeared. It included a great lot of methods.
The following methods can be considered within the Communicative Approach: Communicative Language Teaching, Total Physical Response, The Silent Way, Community Language Learning, The Method of Natural Approach, Suggestopedia, The Kitajgorodskaya's Method of Activation of Individual and Group Potential, the Project Method, Game-like Methods, The Oral-Conscious-Communicative Method, Task-Based Learning, The Immersion Method, the Rounov Method and many others.
All the methods enumerated above are different in the ways of their practical realization, however the scientific idea underlying each of them is the same: speech competence can be formed and developed in learners only when they are taught speech functions instead of linguistic laws [27, 104]. The aim and means of realization of all communicative methods is learners's mastering speech functions of the foreign lesson. Speech functions can be mastered by learners only if while being taught speaking or listening, writing or reading they use foreign language forms spontaneously as a means of socially backgrounded speech interaction.
Methodology is an ever young branch of science, the Communicative Approach hasn't yet exhausted its potentialities and that's why new technologies of teaching within it are still elaborated ("a technology of teaching" and "a method of teaching" are not synonyms). All of them has sprung to life as commercial projects at the market of educational services. With the pass of the time some of them turn to be methods which methodological techniques can be found in foreign language instruction in general and comprehensive school.
The communicative methods can be divided into: humanistically-based methods; comprehension-based ones and those, which use principles of both humanistic pedagogics and those of comprehension-based teaching.
Below there is given a short review of three methods, each representing one of the above groups correspondingly.