Given article displays the importance of development of dialogical skills at secondary school. It describes the notion of a dialogue is given. Different approaches of teaching a dialogue are presented. Different methods and ways of organizing the work at dialogical speech are presented and systematized

Dolzhonok, P.

Sirotkina, M.

Digital Library of Polotsk State University (Репозиторий Полоцкого государственного университета)

ELECTRONIC COLLECTED MATERIALS OF IX JUNIOR RESEARCHERS’ CONFERENCE            2018 Linguistics, literature, philology  30 UDC 372.881.111.1  METHODS OF TEACHING DIALOGUE SKILLS  POLINA DOLZHONOK, MARGARITA SIROTKINA Polotsk State University, Belarus  Given article displays the importance of development of dialogical skills at secondary school. It describes the notion of a dialogue is given. Different approaches of teaching a dialogue are presented. Different methods and ways of organizing the work at dialogical speech are presented and systematized.   Speaking about everyday communication we can’t but mention the notion of dialogue. Dialogues are the most popular form of everyday communication among people. Unfortunately, academic programmers do not always provide teachers of English with the opportunities to develop students’ dialogue skills. The point at issue is that teacher of English are always in search of new sources, methods and techniques of developing students’ dialogue skills. In this article we are going to give examples, describe and systematize some of the exercises for developing dialogue speech. For a start it is necessary to understand clearly what a dialogue is. According to Oxford dictionary dia-logue is a discussion between two or more people or groups, especially one directed towards exploration of a particular subject or resolution of a problem. [1] Following the definition we can conclude that in social sense dialogue is a necessary tool for listening and understanding other people’s view, for exchanging opinions and even reducing misunderstandings, conflict and tension. Speaking about applying dialogues at the English lesson we can say that dialogue is a wonderful means of working at vocabulary and grammar, for its content can be applied to any vocabulary or grammar topic. There is no need to prove its importance in language learning. The difficulty of teaching dialogue is determined by some differences in acquirement of dialogical skills in native and foreign languages. Native language is acquired in the early childhood when a person starts hearing the speech of the parents, so the skills of communicating come of their own accord, while the same skills in for-eign language are taught at school and need motivation and interest. That is why it is important to apply new interesting methods of learning. Everybody knows that there is a difference in native and foreign approach to teaching language. It also concerns teaching dialogues. This article is aimed at having a closer look at foreign methods. The first thing foreign linguists insist on is to make students feel unthreatened and comfortable at the lesson, because in a comfortable setting they will learn more easily. Each new step in the learning process should be non-threatening and repeated sufficiently so everyone feels very comfortable before going on to a higher level of difficulty [2]. Wolfgang Butzkamm, a Professor Emeritus of English as a Foreign Language at Aachen University, claims that dialogue for studying should be learnable, short and appropriate for performance. It shouldn’t be overloaded with grammar structures even if learning grammar is your aim at the lesson. Also a dialogue should be emotionally coloured, challenging and provoking. All these features help students to learn a dialogue more quickly. It is advised to use dialogues based on recently studied language or grammar to show new language items in use. [3] As in native methods of teaching dialogue procedure in foreign sources also comprises repetition of phrases together in the group or individually after the speaker. This stage is called the first presentation. Wolfgang Butzkamm says that it is necessary not to call out names while repeating the dialogue, but use only hand signs. It helps not to interrupt the rhythm and tempo with irrelevant language and memorise the content and intonation more successfully. Also it is important not to read the dialogue before you practice the phrases properly. It helps to avoid spelling and pronouncing mistakes that are caused by the written words. On the stage of rehearsing and practising the phrases there are some more interesting ways to learn and not to get bored. It is offered to use “Lip reading”. A teacher should pronounce some phrases from the dialogue and the children should guess. It is important, that while they are guessing a lot of other phrases are also pronounced and repeated.  One of the ways to encourage children to work at dialogues on their own is to offer them the following activity. Read the dialogue in different ways: silently, mentally in your mind, as if you are bored or shocked, as if you are happy, secretively, in a whisper, in one breath, without pauses, as fast as possible, while rubbing your chin. The teacher can add some more variants to the list. If to speak about particular and most popular tools for teaching dialogue, we have found some interesting examples. ELECTRONIC COLLECTED MATERIALS OF IX JUNIOR RESEARCHERS’ CONFERENCE            2018 Linguistics, literature, philology  31 All kinds of jumbling the lines. You can read mixed dialogue on the sheet of paper for individual or group work. Also it is more interesting to cut out the lines for the children to replace them. One more variant of this exercise is to put pieces of dialogues on several slips of paper ang give each piece to each student and ask them to stand and read the lines in order. You can cut the pieces with phrases and ask them to find their pair. It can work well if the dialogues are short. The task can be to unjumble one dialogue or put in order lines from two or more dialogues mixed together, this way they can transform the given dialogue and the task becomes more complicated. Filling in the gaps. It doesn’t seem to be interesting, but any teacher can transform this task into a game. You can use different kinds of “damaging” of the sheet of paper with printed dialogue. The task is to help you reconstruct the necessary phrases. Create artificial raindrops or coffee spills or smuggest. Encourage children to guess spoilt word or phrase. It increases the level of difficulty by missing out not only key words but also articles or prepositions, then leave them more space than necessary for them to identify where and when items are needed. It makes the task more complicated by taking out key words, mixing them up and putting them back into the wrong places. Correcting the mistakes. This task is useful while practising grammar, prepositions, spelling or any other language phenomena. Mistakes depend on the rule you are working at. Role play. This is a classical stage in developing dialogue skills. This stage is relevant after you have practiced pronouncing key phrases and clichés properly and with the appropriate intonation. Children can work in pairs on their own, a teacher in this case is just going around the classroom, controlling and helping children who need corrections. The work in this way looks like quiet buzzing. You can also role play the dialogue in front of the class and make a competition on the most emotional and artistic dialogue. The following stage usually presupposes making students’ own dialogue, but it is usually quite difficult, so there are some preparatory tasks. The most common is replacement and paraphrasing. You can ask your stu-dents to change key words, but leave the structure of the dialogue. It helps to polish the vocabulary, just let them do as many variants as possible (for example if you are speaking about food, cloth or appearance it be-comes very useful). Paraphrasing is especially relevant when you work with grammar, there can be lots of vari-ants how to express one and the same thing using different structures (for example different ways of expressing future actions or making offers). Usually after doing tasks of this kind, students start extending their dialogues anyway. At this moment you can go further. Making your own dialogue. This is final and the most complicated level of learning dialogues. There are a lot of variants how to make this work creative. Sometimes it is not a problem for children to invent a new story, but there are always children with a lack of confidence and imagination. They need to be encouraged by some-thing. The teacher’s task is to find it. You can offer to think about a conversation based on a short story you have read before. You need to choose interesting characters and a specific part of the story and think what their con-versation could be about. Students’ dialogue can be also based on a song. You should pretend that a singer is singing to a specific person, imagine who can it be and how their chat could look like. One more variant of this task needs a video without sound. Children should just watch the conversation but not listen to it. Then write a script for the video. If you do not have a screen in your classroom you can use comics or just pictures from a magazine in a similar way. There are a lot of variants how to give students ideas for building a dialogue. One of the most convenient and wide-spread ways to work is to prepare cards with the given so-called “background” information. Sometimes children are too unconfident and shy to speak for themselves or about themselves. Tak-ing the card with information about the topic, they have an opportunity to express somebody’s point of view or to “try on” another personality. It reduces shyness and reinforces the desire be active. These cards can be used on different levels and in different kind of works. They can be easily transformed and be used for different tasks in different ways. There are some examples of the cards. Personality card. You should put down the information about name, surname, age, address, phone number, hobby, etc. You can change or add what you need; it de-pends on the topic you are working at. The task can be to make friends, to find a perfect friend, to find particular things in common and so on. Personality card can be used for the communicative game called Speed dating. It is appropriate to show children an extract from a film with this process (there are plenty of examples) for them to get more interested. The task is to find a perfect friend. For senior students the task can be transformed into finding a girlfriend or boyfriend. Shopping list. You are to distribute roles of the shop keepers and buyers. You need two sets of cards. The buyers have a shopping list, the shop keepers have the lists of things they can sell. The task can be to find everything from the shopping list and to make a deal with the shop keeper. Travelling card. You can write the information about the last trip: destination, date, spent time, emotions and so on. The ELECTRONIC COLLECTED MATERIALS OF IX JUNIOR RESEARCHERS’ CONFERENCE            2018 Linguistics, literature, philology  32 task can be to find out information about the trip, to exchange impressions, to find a perfect partner for the trip. You can practice grammar structures and vocabulary, intonation and clichés [4]. The structure of developing dialogue skills consists of the following steps: thorough listening, repeating with the correct sounds and intonation, learning key words, replacement, paraphrasing and extension of a dialogue, practicing the given dialogue, making and presenting students’ own dialogue. The structure is more or less is left the same, but the ways you practise it can be very diverse. So it is evident that there are a lot of variants of developing dialogue skills. It is important to teach children not only monologue, but also develop skills of real communication. Students’ communicative skills must be natural so they will not be afraid of speaking to a foreigner, exchange opinions, discuss, arrange, debate and argue. All these skills are necessary for everyday communication. So teachers can use different ways to encourage students to speak without hesitating. A lesson should be based on the principle of activity and interest in what is being discussed.   REFERENCES  1. English Oxford Dictionary [Electronic resource] / James Augustus Henry Murray. – Oxford university press, 2018. – Mode of access: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com. –Date of access: 15.02.2018. 2. Teaching Techniques [Electronic resourse] / Suzanne Iruio. – New England Multifunctional Resource Center for Language and Culture in Education. Mode of access: http://employees.oneonta.edu/thomasrl/YaTeachTech.pdf. – Date of access: 09.02.2018. 3. Practice Makes Perfect [Electronic resource] / Wolfgang Butzkamm. – Fremdsprachendidaktik & Spracherwerb, 2017. –Mode of access: http://www.fremdsprachendidaktik.rwth-aachen.de/Ww/dialog.html. – Date of access: 09.02.2018. 4. Vanishing Dialogue [Electronic resource] / Derek Spafford. – British Council, 2018. – Mode of access: https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/vanishing-dialogue. – Date of access: 10.02.2018.   

Methods of teaching dialogue skills

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Methods of teaching dialogue skills

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