image Анжела Гергель. Учёба – игра или труд?

Недавно мы беседовали с детьми о том, что интереснее – учиться или играть. Дети однозначно ответили – играть. ‘Хорошо’ – говорю я, – ‘давайте играть’. Мы поиграли, и затем я их спросила – ‘а что это было: игра или упражнение?’ Дети, не раздумывая, ответили – ‘упражнение’. Тогда я напомнила им, что мы начали играть… И вот тогда они мне возразили – ‘ну это одновременно и игра, и учеба’. – ‘Значит, учеба – это игра?’ – ‘Получается, так…’ — согласились дети. – ‘Вам было интересно?’ – ‘Конечно!’ – ‘А было ли вам легко?’ – ‘Не всегда.’ – ‘Пришлось потрудиться?’ – ‘Пришлось…’ – ‘Значит, учеба – это все-таки труд?’ – ‘Труд, но интересный’ – ответили дети. Так что без труда никак.

Jump to the mushroom!

Так весело стрибати! І діти навіть не помічають, що опановують граматичні структури, які в класичному форматі вивчати важкувато (та й нудно, повірте).

Going Shopping

Ця гра здається банальною. Але ж її можна ускладнити відповідно віку та рівню учнів. Найперший діалог може складатись з двох реплік: – What would you like? – An apple, please. А в подальшому не тільки діалог нарощується, а й структура самої гри ускладнюється.

Спочатку вибираються ‘продавці’, для яких підготовлені ‘робочі місця’, що розташовані в різних куточках класної кімнати. Крамниць може бути дві або три – в залежності від кількості учнів. Решта дітей – покупці. Вони отримують від 5 до 7 монет, які вирізані з паперу. Для першого разу використовуються монети вартістю £1, щоб не потрібно було давати решту. Ціни на кожен продукт теж мають бути від £1 до £3, щоб не ускладнювати процес спилкування. На цей раз диалог звучить так: – Hello! What would you like? – I’d like a (big/small) apple, please. – £2 please. – Here you are. – Thank you.

У наступні рази гра може закінчуватись підсумком. Кожна дитина показує і каже, що купила. А ‘продавці’ – скільки заробили. Таким чином дієслова в минулому часі спочатку засвоюються на лексичному рівні. В цю гру можна граті багато разів, поступово ускладнюючи її.

Colouring

On fait des photos

Sammeln wir die blätter!

Тепла осіння гра, в якій діти вживають перші складні граматичні структури.

Devinez ce que je fais

В цю гру можна грати і в класі. Але ж в ботанічному саду набагато цікавіше! І ефективніше.

Грамматика!

Ох, как её не любят дети! А ведь она может быть такой интересной! В нашей школе мы разработали специальные грамматические игры, которые настолько нравятся детям, что они могут играть в них без устали – не замечая, как оттачивают грамматическую правильность английской речи в реальных жизненных ситуациях.

There is … There are …

Скучная и не совсем понятная детишкам структура. Да ещё и проблематична в произношении, особенно в вопросительной форме. Так что без игры не обойтись. А игра называется ‘Packing my schoolbag’. Состоит она из двух частей и занимает почти весь урок.

1. What I take and what I don’t take when I go to school. Дети по очереди выбирают карточки и кладут их под соответствующий заголовок, комментируя: When I go to school I take / I don’t take a pen / a pan. Можно устроить целую дискуссию: Do you really take a watering can to school? How often? В таких случаях беседа расширяется и можно сразу же, на ходу вводить новые лексические единицы. На фоне эмоционального подъёма они запоминаются намного эффективне.

Но главное – никаких указаний, дети говорят то, что есть на самом деле, Может, кто-то и вправду берёт мороженое в школу – что ж тут такого? А если детишки и присочинят немного для живости – упражнение только веселее будет. Нам, взрослым, необходимо помнить, что любые ‘правильные’ указания мгновенно блокируют мысль ребёнка – а уж речь и тем более. А ведь наша цель – помочь детям научиться общаться!

Анжела Гергель. Грамматические игры

2. Следующий этап игры – отгадывание, что спрятано в портфеле. И вот тут вот дети употребляют структуру There is / there are в реальном общении, а значит – она уже понятна. Дело за техникой. Это возможно при многократном повторении структуры – и только что использованная лексика употребляется снова. И чем больше было в первой части вещей, которые дети пакуют или не пакуют в портфель, тем больше раз они повторят сложную грамматическую конструкцию во второй части игры. Это очень важно! Ведь повторение – залог запоминания.

Перед игрой карточки раскладываются на группы ‘singular – plural’. Таким образом дети участвуют в планировании урока – хоть и опосредованно, но это имеет большое значение для формирования у детей понятия структуры деятельности. Сначала играем в режиме ‘класс – ученик’. По-очереди дети прячут карточки с рисунками под картинку с портфелем, а остальные отгадывают, что там: Is there a pen in the bag? Отгадывать, по уже известному детям правилу, можно только с трёх попыток. Если же никто не угадал – хором спрашивают: What is there in the bag?

Анжела Гергель. Грамматические игры

Далее прячем карточки с предметами во множественном числе, употребляя структуру ‘ Are there pencils in the bag? ‘

Ну а самое интересное, конечно же, работа в маленьких группах. Это можно посмотреть на видео ниже. Не забудьте включить тихонько музыку – это способствует более раскрепощённой беседе. И полная свобода действий! При этом заметьте – никаких проблем с дисциплиной. Шалить некогда – ведь учиться так интересно!

Хочется уже общаться, а спросить что-то сложно – мало того, что порядок слов меняется, а тут ещё надо соблюдать единственное/множественное число, настоящее/прошедшее время – пока сообразишь, так уже и спрашивать не захочется! Выучить все нескончаемые варианты вопросительных упражнений, конечно, можно – но это так неинтересно, особенно детям! Но если освоение иностранного языка началось в раннем возрасте, то у нас есть достаточно времени, чтобы вдоволь наиграться с разными грамматическими формами.

Одна из любимых игр детей – прятки. Прятать можно всё, что угодно. Чем больше вариантов, тем больше раз дети смогут применить изучаемые структуры. Для начала прячем карандаш. Дети Поворачиваются и по-очереди угадывают: Is it behind the box (basket, cup, book)? Тот, кто отгадал, прячет следующим. При этом может выбрать карандаш любимого цвета (выбор – это очень важно!): I’d like to hide the … pencil.

Вариант – прячем животных в лесу. И снова дети выбирают, кого они хотят прятать. Деревья удобно склеить и поставить гармошкой, как на фото.

Таких площадок в комнате должно быть несколько, что позволит разделить детей на группы, и они смогут играть одновременно. После того, как в каждой группе каждый ребёнок был ведущим, все подходят к каждой площадке и угадывают, что и где прятали дети. И вот тут-то нужно употреблять прошедшее время! Для начала угадываем, что прятал первый ребёнок в данной группе: – Did you hide the green/blue pencil? Did you hide a squirrel? – No^ I didn’t./Yes, I did. – Was it behind the …? – No, it wasn’t./Yes, it was.

Но это ещё не всё! Теперь игра начинается с самого начала, но прячем по два карандаша или животных! Да-да! Множественное число! И конечно же, ребёнок снова выбирает, что прятать! I’d like to hide the pink and blue pencils. Turn around. OK, I am ready. Where are the pencils? – Are they behind the … ? – Yes, they are./No, they are not!

То же самое происходит на другой площадке. – I’d like to hide the squirrels/birds. Turn around! I am ready. Where are the squirrels? – Are they behind the … ? – Yes, they are/No, they are not.

И снова дети маленькими группами играют на разных площадках одновременно. После этого всем классом обходим каждую площадку и угадываем, что и где прятали дети. – Did you hide the squirrels/birds? Were they behind the … ? Вот так-то – мало того, что множественное число, так и ещё прошедшее время! Вот это труд! Да, вы не ослышались. Дети трудятся довольно усердно. Но труд этот – в радость, и потому не истощает.

Наверное, среди нас все слышали эти непонятные слова, и даже могут вспомнить правило… Но как только доходит дело до практического применения, все путается – и вспомогательные глаголы, и окончания! Потому что – повторю – если мы говорим о связи теории и жизни, то и учить эту теорию нужно в реальной жизненной ситуации.

Для детей игра пока что ближе, чем проза жизни. Но общение детей в игре – абсолютно реально. Это виде демонстрирует, как в реальном общении дети ПРИМЕНЯЮТ в речи грамматическую структуру Present Continuous.

Одна из любимых грамматических игр среди детей – действия и отчеты. Мы разработали много вариантов этой игры. Предлагаем вашему вниманию вот такую:

1. Дети работают в парах. Сначала они выбирают три-четыре карточки с указанными действиями и решают, что из них они будут делать. Если кто-то не хочет выполнять какое-либо действие, он говорит об этом партнеру по игре, и тогда действие не выполняется. Между детьми происходит диалог, который, несмотря на учебную задачу, является абсолютно реальным, поскольку дети НА САМОМ ДЕЛЕ принимают решения. – Let’s run! – OK! (running) – Let’s jump! – OK! – Let’s fly! – No! I don’t want to dance! – Why? – I cannot dance! (I don’t like dancing!)
2. После выполнения всех действий дети ‘рапортуют’: We ran, jumped… but we didn’t dance.

На видео вы можете посмотреть, как дети выполняют это упражнение.

Следующее упражнение – одна из ‘вариаций на ту же тему’.

1. Дети работают в парах. Команды написаны на карточках. Ведущий в каждой паре выбирает три команды из них и лает задания своему другу. Он их выполняет, однако к у него есть право одну команду ‘забыть’.

2. Выполнив команды, ученик находит соответствующие предложения для отчета. После чего происходит такой диалог:

• I dusted the piano and I washed the table.
• I asked you to water the flowers.
• Sorry, I forgot.
• Next time be attentive.
• I will do it right away.

Команд может быть сколько угодно, и в эту игру можно играть бесконечно! На этом видео вы можете посмотреть, как обучение грамматике происходит не только на уроке, но и после уроков – в саду, где дети воспринимают упражнение как отдых, но на самом деле это практическое применение приобретенных на уроке навыков.

В следующем упражнении использованы парадоксальные высказывания – именно поэтому упражнение и интересно детям.

Анжела Гергель. Обучающие игры. Немецкий язык.

Их задача – разложить карточки на две группы: что возможно и что невозможно. А вот наша задача – тренировка детей в употреблении фраз: Das ist möglich и Das ist unmöglich с различным лексическим наполнением.

Следующее упражнение – одно из самых любимых среди учеников. Детишки с удовольствием дают друг другу команды и рапортуют об их выполнении. Это их задача. Наша же задача – тренировка детей в употреблении в речи правильных грамматических форм.

A person speaking several foreign languages is better at adapting to its socioeconomic and cultural conditions. Mastering more than one language is good both in linguistic and cognitive terms.

This project aims at helping students acquire social, cultural and linguistic aspects of several foreign languages by learning the respective cultures and developing a diverse outlook.

Анжела Гергель. Обучающие игры

The series of textbooks for each of the languages can be used separately to learn one foreign language. At the same time, we developed a special plan to even out the student workload if the series are used simultaneously. The teaching takes into account the student’s inclinations and preferences and the end result is not just all-round development and mastery of several languages but also the child’s future successful adjustment and personal self-fulfilment.

For most of the people it seems to be easier to live without responsibility. If our aim is to develop in children self-planning, self-organization and responsibility, we should by certain means let them understand that people who take responsibility are more confident in their future life and therefore happier than others.

We have attempted to create an environment that favours the development of freedom and responsibility, an environment where every student will be able to follow the path of self-discovery, self-assessment and self-directed active learning.

As distinct from studying, active learning is a process of getting to know the world through one’s own experience. For example, if a child falls after running very fast she makes her own conclusion that running at different speeds leads to different outcomes, that is, the child has shaped a distinction in one’s mind. So, teaching based on these methods proceeds by increasing the number of distinctions.

Active learning is real, studying is artificial. The ideal is a crossover of these two paths. Our task is to ensure that children learn in such a way that they can use their experience in reality.

Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it. (Robert Frost)

To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others. The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.

Angela Gergel Анжела Гергель. Off We Go! Анжела Гергель. Allons! Angela Gergel. Gehen wir!

Wise men speak because they have something to say. Fools speak because they have to say something. (Plato)

Angela Gergel. books Angela Gergel. Funway Анжела Гергель Анжела Гергель. Книги Анжела Гергель. Книги Анжела Гергель. Книги Анжела Гергель. Книги Анжела Гергель. Книги Анжела Гергель. Книги Анжела Гергель. Книги

Scientists’ observations show that to a large extent, human behaviour is related to actively involving the environment in the continuous search for information that the person needs to build an individual world view. Psychologists’ research proves that nothing is perceived in isolation, separately from the overall environment. Any information must fit in with the interpretation of the situation in general. A sign that forms in the brain needs a complete image as its basis; only then it can replace that image.

Psychologists point out that interpretation of sensory data is largely based on the data of what a specific signal should be like rather than on the information that the signal conveys. This additional information is supplied by the context that makes the human perception system more advanced and flexible. We always move on trying to gather as much context information as possible before performing the actions that our task requires.

Knowledge that works well in one task doesn’t always work in a different task that’s similar to the first one in form and structure; but this knowledge always works if acceptable context exists. They call this quality of knowledge “semi-abstraction”. Therefore, two factors are the most important conditions of teaching: 1) presence of a context that is necessary for major forms of information encoding; 2) child’s acquisition of experience in the whole variety of modifications of a certain task and its external conditions, which elevates knowledge to the abstract level. This can be achieved by modelling the natural conditions of studying, that is, modelling the context of activity.

Therefore, natural conditions of studying are modelled by creating the necessary context of an activity and a storyline. A storyline is an organization of events united by common content, ensuring that experience is gained. The context of educational activities includes all the environmental phenomena that affect behaviour.

The methods used in theatre can be applied to model the learning context; after all, dramatization is nothing but models of real life. In dramatic works, the main way of modelling life is story-based role-playing. The simplest way of providing a context is grouping events. Therefore, when compiling our method system we built the learning materials involving various learning aids in the story.

The importance of an integrated long story-based course is that it is a purposefully created game macrocontext that models a real macro-situation and creates a guideline for students’ certain activities throughout the course. Only in a game activity, the necessary operations can be replaced by other operations, and one environment can be substituted for another, while preserving the content of the action itself. All the tasks we created have the practical aim, satisfy the child’s interests and provoke the internal need to finish the task. The child feels that practical result of the task depends not on the teacher’s or parents’ evaluation, but the on his/her real skills.

The story-based course draws on the traditions of the popular Italian Commedia dell’Arte where the stock characters, the masks (Harlequin, Colombina, Pulcinella, Pierrot) were making up the story as they went, improvising during the play. Most importantly, they involved the audience in the play. The story-based game is dynamic and includes many events. It is known that an event is an action resulting in a change in the person’s behaviour. That is, an event is the outside activator that helps a person form motivation for a certain action. The rich variety of events increases the number of distinctions and shapes personal experience.

In most current textbooks, the material is divided and grouped on the basis of grammatical or lexical features. The result is a structural system, where all the exercises in every lesson are meant for practicing a specific vocabulary or grammatical phenomenon. In contrast to the traditional textbooks, story-based structure of teaching materials means, above all, that the plot of the activity is created and the material is distributed according to the selected story. The teaching course is planned as a sequence of events that influence students’ behaviour. The end result is a functional system.

Interferences also include differing types of activity because acquired skills of one activity can complicate skill formation for other activities. For example, teaching junior students to read requires a lot of repetition. To avoid monotony in this exercise, different forms of activity are used. Cards with words can even be placed differently: in the children’s hands, on the floor, on the blackboard etc. Simultaneous involvement in several forms of activity helps students learn to divide attention while improving various skills.

Language acts as a model of the way the world functions and is structured as a network where each element is connected to and dependent on the others. Therefore, as distinct from linear and consecutive material delivery, we suggest integration based on the system principle: developing the child’s ability to model the holistic reality. When the material is divided into parcels and relations arise among them, the result is a holistic structure. Therefore, a system is an indivisible totality of functionally interconnected elements which is always more effective than a simple sum total of the elements that make it up. This phenomenon stems from the fact that the interrelations among the system components result in a new quality. A child can incorporate only holistically organized activity into his or her life situation. The material is delivered in functional polylogues at first and then practiced in a number of roleplaying games. Multiple repetitions of an action make it automatic but it is performed subconsciously. The automatic actions result in a habit but it’s tied to a specific context. Several basic operations (experiential procedures) are combined into an ability. It takes a number of activity procedures (roleplaying games) with a change of context to ensure the transfer, teaching the child specifically to transfer a skill; this is how an ability is formed.

A major precondition for skill formation is the correct distribution of exercises over time; in real life, this precondition exists due to the context. The biggest bulk of exercises should be given at the beginning of the practice. Then, as the practicing time grows, the interval between skill formation exercises must increase. At the same time, the practice (even very little) must purposefully continue until the end of the study. Unfortunately, most current textbooks don’t take this principle into account.

Combining different story-lessons in one common storyline allows for distinct distribution of exercises over time. Filling in the intervals between practicing one part of the material by practicing another, we therefore unite the teaching material into one integrated course that goes down in the child’s memory as one big holistic indivisible story-lesson. This satisfies the principle of maintaining a holistic world view.

With junior students, distribution of exercises over time is especially important as it means alternation of different material to prevent overfatigue and ensure that the material is systematically revised every time in new conditions and at a new level, that is, “reviewing without reviewing” (N.A. Bernstein). The most efficient and correctly organized practice is when the smallest efforts are combined with the best thought-out variety of feelings in the conditions most conducive to the conscious mastery of all these feelings.

A student performs a sequence of tasks growing in complexity, that is, repeatedly performs actions similar in structure but different in content, every time at a new level in new situations which are distributed evenly throughout the textbook. This doesn’t only lead to formation of flexible speech skills that the student can use in any context, but also teaches the students to structure their actions and fill them with content.

The students’ vocabulary grows and there is a possibility for adding. Every next level contains the previous one and the conflict with the previous one continues. All this can be called a systemic-integrative approach. Just enlarging the vocabulary isn’t enough; synthesis and integration are important. And not just any integration, but integration based on the systemic principle. This is the principle of building up the ability to reflect the holistic reality while stressing the things that are used as an element of functioning in the real world; literally, this is system integration.

The storyline-based course is dynamic both in terms of time (the events are unfolding) and space (a range of audio-visual methods) causes a lot of context components to arise. The change and alteration of these components create a wide field in which the children’s experience can be applied. This promotes the development of flexible skills and formation of an all-round idea of the phenomenon under study.

The game context allows improvisations on the basis of the acquired experience. One of the ways to modify a task is to change the components of its context that include: the guideline, communication partner, environment, interior, season and time of the day (according to the microsituation), type of activity, kinds of visual aids. A change of even one of the above components is a modification of the task, that is, becomes a new task for the student. When integration of information or activities is used, the programs to build one skill should be combined with programs that build other skills; at the same time, interference is prevented.

Interference here means “the inhibiting action of skills when the established skills make it difficult to form other skills or reduce their effectiveness”. Interference is observed when skills and abilities differ in stability. Skill stability is determined by how long ago it was established and how often it is applied. The closer skills and abilities are to each other, the less different they are, and the less frequently interference occurs. Interference from an established skill disappears as soon as a new skill becomes as automatic as the established one. While pointing out that interfering phenomena should be studied at the same time, it should be said that when skills are formed at the same time, one action explains the other additionally. Besides, a change of activity prevents premature fixation of a certain phenomenon before students have shaped an adequate image. Ultimately, they get a more correct idea about the way actions are interdependent and interrelated.

Psychologists’ and teachers’ experiments show that involvement of the existing knowledge in the learning of new things changes the cognitive activity by developing its new properties: conciseness of mental operations, logical memory, powers of observation, self-discipline and stability of attention; the regulating function of attention is also improved. L.S.Vygotsky stressed that “any new stage of generalization arises only on the basis of the previous one”.

To overcome interference, students must learn to differentiate substantial differences and similarities of the phenomena under study. Forming the distinctions is crucial to performing an action because the most common mistake is a failure to notice substantial differences in the phenomena under study.

The traditional sequence of delivering new teaching material is unproductive. In case of story-based teaching, the interfering phenomena are practiced in one situation, allowing the students to grasp and memorize them in their natural oppositions. For example, students master the present and past tenses much better in one situation where these phenomena are opposed with an emphasis on the content, and structural differences are analyzed only after that.

Motivation is known to be the most important factor in effective learning. Children have a wide variety of motives for studying, including the attractiveness of success, the rewards for academic performance (a mark, a gift), the desire to be the best in one’s class, to please one’s parents or the favourite teacher. But the above motives don’t work all the time. A bad mark, no present for a good mark, a new teacher who’s not as likeable as the previous one can immediately (and sometimes forever) discourage the student from studying not just this particular subject but studying in general.

A child has an inborn drive to learn the world and instinctively acts it out by imitating adults’ behaviour. Acting out this drive causes the development that consists of three stages: action, image, symbol. The interrelation among these three systems is central to the person’s intellectual development. We cannot eliminate any of these three components during the study.

It is common knowledge that when studying under natural conditions, a person can unconsciously regulate his or her physical condition. Mechanisms of this regulation rely on the dominant on the one hand and on the current situation in the environment, on the other hand. The principle of the dominant was introduced by A.A.Ukhtomsky and developed by I.A.Arshavsky to support the system of raising and teaching elementary school students. According to Ukhtomsky, the dominant is a physiological mechanism that determines and guides behaviour when excitation spreads just over the constellation of nerve centres which is necessary for certain behaviour. As a result, a certain mental image arises in the brain – a purpose that implies an end result. Completion of the dominant, that is, achievement of the programmed result is usually accompanied by a positive emotion (a feeling of intense satisfaction). As a result, the dominant created externally (by the teacher) transforms into the endogenous (internal) need to repeat it.

People are impelled to act by various activators. The first and foremost one is a need when changes in the environment are reported to the person’s psyche (it’s raining – I must find my umbrella; it’s suddenly grown colder outside – I must go back from the bus stop to put on something warmer). A need is an objective deficiency that functions unconsciously. Feeling very thirsty on a hot day during an exciting movie, a person goes and looks for water no matter how interesting the film is. Awareness of the outside context and one’s own resources shapes a want. Analysis of one’s want and the “strategic plan” for its satisfaction creates an internal activator – a motive. The motive always matches the situation. That is why these teaching methods aim to create a context that can generate students’ motivation and adequate behaviour.

Instead of the deterministic principle, the nervous system relies on the freedom of choice in taking decisions on how to react to the external influences of the environment. But the “free will” is determined, on the one hand, by previously experienced events and on the other hand, by the current situation in the environment itself which urges one to take the right and appropriate decision as to this or that behaviour.

The only system that can be considered effective enough is the one that turns into self-discipline and thus, into self-control and personal improvement. The only teaching system that can be considered effective enough is the one that turns into self-training and ensures constant self-organization of individual development.

That is why children are given the chance of making their own decisions as often as possible (choosing an activity among 2-3 types proposed by the teacher, choosing the mode of doing an exercise, planning the sequence of exercises for the next lesson). But no matter how attractive the possibility of making their own decisions can be, children do not avoid the responsibility for the consequences (if it takes them too long to do the first exercise, they have no time left to play the game they were planning), which instils in them the skills of planning and self-organization.

It is probably difficult to believe that children under 5 can plan their activities and evaluate the results on their own, but our observations showed that the children learn to do it really quickly and feel very satisfied after doing the tasks they planned themselves.

Our textbooks don’t offer a complete knowledge base that students would have to learn by heart. On the contrary, the textbook suggests that the students go on an experiential journey and acquire the knowledge through their own experience. By mastering speaking practice in a proactive and creative way, acquiring knowledge and learning to work with texts (which are among the main units of speech communication), students develop their creative abilities and improve the quality of their learning. Facilitation means that teachers must outline the direction of learning and help students achieve their objective. Clear-cut directions are known to always cause a defensive reaction and confrontation which the teacher has to overcome by applying psychological techniques to reach out to students.

Non-directive teaching is the most effective kind as it develops potential and doesn’t cause confrontation. The signs of non-directive teaching are as follows:

– students provide content for and structure their study time; students plan their learning activities and evaluate their own results;

– freedom of choice (choosing the means of expression regarding one’s selected role or opinion, choosing the way of doing an exercise/the sequence of doing exercises in class, or, as paradoxical as it may sound, not doing an exercise at all: research shows that given this opportunity, children hardly ever refuse to do the exercise because the tasks are phrased as challenges);

– group dynamics (mixing groups) that ensures that students’ own resources are involved. Teachers’ and students’ efforts add up because in the absence of confrontation they are applied in the same direction;

– a vivid emotional background of the activities. The textbook includes a lot of pleasant or unpleasant situations (an impressive tour, a great concert, an exciting party, losing one’s documents, being late for class, being reprimanded at work, getting fired, having an accident etc.) that stimulate one to express one’s attitude to the event. It’s very important for people as social creatures to have distinct feelings, to make sure that their thoughts are right so that they can keep feeling comfortable and safe. Expression of emotions causes a real psychological upheaval and this creates the background that helps master the material far better, shape cognitive components faster and make mnemic functions work more effectively. As a result, students feel as co-authors of the material and interiorize (own) it, working with it as if it were their own.

Self-evaluation

When the task has a practical aim, you have the practical result, and in this case even a small child can evaluate it. That is why we suggest avoiding using evaluatio like ‘well done’, ‘very well’, ‘right/wrong’, but noting what the students have really done: ‘You have built the bird-house, and now the birds can live in it.’ When evaluating the personal progress of a student, you can say: ‘Yesterday you did two excercises and today you did three’; ‘You did this task a week ago and today you remember how to do it’; ‘Todays’t task is more difficult than yesterday’s, and you did it’ – nothing else is not needed to add. Hearing this from the teachers/parents the children learn to eveluate their actions on their own, and the adults should suggest the children do it. The ability of self-evaluation has a significant psycotherapeutic effect and helps to avoid the dependance from the opinion of the others. A person who is able to evaluate indpendantly the things in the outer world and his/her place in it is a free person.

The facilitating approach used in the textbook is intended to satisfy our children’s growing need to structure their thoughts and actions creatively and develop an all-round, fully functional personality. A person involved in life’s various emotional experiences lives in ever-increasing harmony with oneself and other people.

The teaching process based on this method models real-life learning conditions, thus ensuring that students take an active part in the learning process and productively grasp the teaching material while preserving the students’ physical condition.

Real-life learning means that students acquire experience in activities that fit their interests in life. Psychophysiologists proved that in real-life learning, a person is capable of controlling his or her own physical condition and hardly ever gets overtired.

In the classical teaching methods, exercises in foreign language teaching are divided into linguistic exercises and communicative exercises. Linguistic exercises fall into phonetic, lexical and grammatical ones. In educational psychology, they are called “dry exercises”, being done under the direct purposeful control of one’s consciousness. A communicative exercise is performing actions as part of a holistic activity.

Communicative exercises fall into three types: information exchange, problem solving, project work. The tasks in communicative exercises use the elements of situational programming and include two obligatory components: task-setting and instructions. The task-setting evokes certain emotions in the child and the instructions lead the child to perform certain actions.

Between linguistic exercises and communicative exercises, a long sequence of conditionally communicative exercises is used during which students’ consciousness is distracted from the educational purpose.

According to the Common European Framework of Reference, students learn to express their needs, ask for help, react to requests for help (express their desire to help or explain why they won’t), express suggestions, agree or disagree with suggestions, speak of their impressions, give advice.

The teaching material is delivered in functional polylogues and then practiced in a series of exercises. The grammatical phenomena under study are given in the comments to and patterns for the corresponding section and the provided examples are taken from the students’ active vocabulary. Emphasis is placed not just on the form but also on the functioning of grammar structures in oral speech.

At this stage, exercises are structurally similar to those at an earlier stage but are more varied and complicated.

As noted above, exercises are divided into “dry” (linguistic exercises) and functional (conditionally communicative exercises and speech exercises). In linguistic exercises, students’ attention is focused directly on the learning goal, which may lead to decreased interest in case of many reviews. However, specialists in teaching methods don’t doubt the necessity of such exercises. To solve this problem, we transformed these exercises into language games. In terms of structure, these exercises aren’t different from the way that linguistic exercises are done. To find out the difference, we must turn to the definition of what a “game” is. According to psychologists, a game is an activity that doesn’t have a vitally important result as its goal. But this definition doesn’t draw any distinction between a educational exercise and a game. Another difference should be pointed out: a game must necessarily cause personal emotional involvement. This definition can turn any activity, educational or practical, into a game. The term “personal emotional” is comprised of two crucial factors, so we shall examine them in turn.

Emotional excitement is known to involve a number of important subcortical centres in the vigorous activity. This tones up the cerebral cortex and boosts its functional performance. Positive emotions related to the high spirits can considerably decrease fatigue. Interesting work creates a rather strong dominant excitation field in the cerebral cortex. As a result of negative induction, excitation in other parts of the brain decreases. Attention isn’t scattered and the child is absorbed in the work. The dominant is much weaker when the work is monotonous. Instead of boosting it, outside impulses easily interfere and cause new excitation fields to arise in the cerebral cortex. Weak excitation of the dominant field isn’t accompanied by reduced excitation of other parts of the cortex. The arising conditions are conducive to scattered attention, to switching to a different activity.

When emotions are involved, educational materials are remembered fast and well because traces of the emotional memory are mainly formed at the first presentation. Motivation gets a boost due to purposeful influence on the students’ emotional sphere and due to the use of the emotional memory. Emotions include: interest, surprise, joy, fear, anger, shame, delight etc. Our research showed that due to story-based methods, interest takes the lead among all the emotions that the students feel (see Fig.)

The educational system is undergoing quite rapid and radical changes supposedly intended to increase the effectiveness of studying. However, fundamental research of the somatic, physiological and psychological consequences of these changes doesn’t just fall behind; in many cases there is a total absence of any real experimental evidence that would support this or that educational innovation. This concerns not just the innovative issues like IT in teaching but also the traditional issues of teaching practice: when and how to start studying, the right workload for the elementary school, the need for majors in secondary schools etc. The state of affairs in this respect can be illustrated by a selection of materials from the early foreign language learning.

Fatigue (a temporary decrease in performance because of prolonged strain) occurs when the internal reserves are depleted. In case of fatigue, vegetative decompensation arises, nervous processes become more inert, sensitivity, memory, attention and thinking deteriorate; negative emotions arise; performance deteriorates in terms of quality and speed. Fatigue has varied manifestations: decreased work performance, problems with attention, memory, intellectual processes, shifts in the emotional and motivational sphere.

A complex of subjective worries arises to accompany fatigue, but the feeling of fatigue can sometimes occur without any real fatigue, while real fatigue can be accompanied by an emotional upsurge. Age specifics in the formation of the fatigue syndrome can have their limitations and advantages.

I.N.Shpilrein’s biosocial concept of fatigue is interesting in this respect. He suggested differentiating between two types of fatigue: the one caused by work per se and psychogenic fatigue caused by a shift of the psychic dominant from the work process to external emotional worries (I.N.Shpilrein. What Fatigue Is// Psychotechnics and psychophysiology of work. 1931, No 1, pp.69-82).

There is a multitude of various factors that promote fatigue, including: physical factors (high or low temperature in the room, polluted air, uncomfortable workplaces, inadequate lighting, uncomfortable clothes or shoes); psychological factors (low motivation, a low emotional state, negative interpersonal relations in the group); factors related to workload characteristics (duration, complexity, bad process organization).

Normally, fatigue is eliminated thanks to compensatory mechanisms, the simplest of them being a rhythmical change in the forms and levels of activity. But it is rather archaic, while an adequate compensatory mechanism takes a lot of time to work.

A compensatory mechanism of another type is very widespread among highly organized organisms. This mechanism involves a change in the nature of workload: while some subsystems are working hard others are restoring their resources. This helps the organism to use its lifetime more efficiently, continue gaining experience without interruption and not reduce its activity to zero.

Without claiming to solve global issues in the science of teaching, we tried to solve an individual issue in teaching practice: create an optimal teaching course for three foreign languages (English, French, German) that has a psychophysiological content that will ensure an optimal workload and firm grasp of the material.

The research involved 106 children aged from 6 to 15 with 5 trials conducted in every class. Therefore, the number of measurements is sufficient for the findings to be statistically significant.

The main indicators were measured before and after classes. The measure of fatigue was a reduction in the major indicators: short-term memory capacity, the pace of sensorimotor activity, attention concentration.

The following psychophysiological characteristics were under study: sensorimotor performance, analytico-synthetic performance, level of self-regulation. The null hypothesis was developed as follows: the teaching methods cause the students’ psychophysiological condition to undergo changes the nature of which points to a threat to the further balanced development of the students. Such changes can be believed to be a simultaneous decrease in both sensorimotor performance and analytico-synthetic performance accompanied by a reduced effectiveness of self-regulation. These changes must be of a systematic nature in all trials and all research subjects.

In our study, the indicator of sensorimotor performance was the pace of sensorimotor activity. Sensorimotor activity is viewed as a gnostic-praxic synthesis that happens at a verbal level. Performance of a tapping test in psychological and physiological studies is usually used as an integral indicator of the overall level of activation that reflects performance of three psychic spheres at once: the sensory, analytico-synthetic and motor spheres. In terms of physiology, this indicator reflects the condition of higher nervous activity; in terms of psychology, it reflects the state of the processes that don’t require the participation of the second signal system.

A tapping test was used to determine the pace of sensorimotor activity. Students were given sheets of squared paper, a pencil or a pen and were asked to put dots in every square, line after line, as fast as possible. The resulting number of dots (a trial lasts 3 min) indicates the pace of sensorimotor activity.

In our study, the indicator of analytico-synthetic performance was short-term memory capacity. From the point of view of the psychological mechanism, short-term memory, on the one hand, is directly related to the energy state of the cerebral cortex; on the other hand, short-term memory is part of not only intellectual processes but also the intellectual “foundation”. Without the properly functioning short-term memory, we wouldn’t be able to understand time, space and our own personality. Analysis and synthesis of information are impossible without short-term storage of output data in the mnestic registers. Therefore, the fact that we study the methods of teaching several foreign languages to children acquires special importance. It is quite possible that viewed in terms of a child’s general development, multilingualism that’s based on verbal symbolization can slow down not just the child’s own linguistic but also mental processes related to the second signal system. The mechanism of such possible inhibition could be an overload of the mnestic registers of the short-term memory. In this case, we will observe not the overall intellectual decrease in the child but a decrease in his or her verbal intellect while preserving the object-practical intellect. Such a person will be cunning, very practical, devoid of sensitivity and reflectivity, not interested in ethics and aesthetics, with a rather healthy outlook. Of course, these are all theoretical fantasies. Fundamental research is needed not just to support these statements but even to hypothesize. If things looked exactly like this, all polyglots would be somewhat primitive. The smartest people would be the ones who don’t speak their native language well. But we can state that for our study, an appropriate indicator is the state of the short-term memory which is evaluated using numerical material. The study findings saying that a reduction concerns short-term memory in particular, can be very alarming in relation to the fears pointed out in Vygotsky’s article on children’s multilingualism. Considering that this reduction progresses – the older the children, the more pronounced the reduction is after classes – this becomes twice as alarming. So the intense uplifting activity which is an integral part of our methods will mask the increasing deficiency of the analytico-synthetic activity of the higher symbolic-semantic levels.

In our study, the task of researching short-term memory is to identify what amount of the suggested material the students can retain and repeat. Short-term memory from the point of view of teaching methods that requires that the numbers be simply reproduced (in this context, symbols with quite a narrow meaning) indicates the condition of higher psychic functions. When numerical material is used, it is far less likely that the research subjects will develop an active attitude to the content of the stimulus material. This is especially important when working with students of foreign languages where the goal of “mastering words” is directly related to understanding one’s own success or lack thereof. Therefore, measuring the capacity of memorizing numeric material is in line with the task of evaluating the condition of students’ psyche after classes.

The study involved numerical material (Jacobs’ method). A sequence of 12 numbers (from 1 to 24) was read out to the children; then, at the experimenter’s command they wrote down randomly the numbers they remembered. Two trials were conducted, and the average value was taken as the indicator of short-term memory capacity.

Attention concentration that is directly related to the level of overall non-specific activation can serve as a self-regulation indicator. Being a sensitizer of cognitive processes, attention is a foundation that ensures both the necessary energy level of processes and their capacity – the level of self-regulation. Of course, the decrease in the attention concentration cannot help influencing other indicators, including those of content; therefore, in our research we can’t do without assessing attention concentration.

To measure the attention concentration, we used the correction trial of B.Bourdon. The students are given a form with a line of letters or other signs and are told to look at all the signs in every line within a certain period, while crossing out those that were indicated by the experimenter in advance. The experiment results in the following findings: quantity of the material under study, number of missing characters, number of incorrectly crossed-out characters. In fact, these findings characterize the performance and accuracy of the research subject. As the indicator of attention concentration, we used the number of lines with correctly crossed-out letters. A trial took 3 min.

A decrease in all the three characteristics after classes will provide evidence of overall fatigue and point to the possibility of fatigue build-up (chronic fatigue). This decrease will also indicate that the teaching methods put threatening pressure on children aged 6-15. By contrast, the absence of significant changes in all the three characteristics before and after classes will indicate the absence of fatigue, which means that the teaching methods don’t have a negative effect on the children’s psychophysiological state. An increase in all the three characteristics after classes will point to the activating effects on the teaching methods and the possible development of paradoxical fatigue. An imbalance in the indicators (some are up while others are down after classes) will point to the development of local fatigue and a possible development of compensatory mechanisms to overcome it. Besides, such a state of the indicators will show that the teaching methods affect some characteristics too much while sparing the others. Information of this kind can be useful in developing and fine-tuning the teaching methods.

As evident from the research findings, the rate of sensorimotor activity is somewhat up after classes; that means that most students don’t display any fatigue in the sensorimotor area. An increase in sensorimotor performance at the end of the classes is more pronounced in the range of middle and low figures. Depending on the students’ age, it goes up in senior students.

Analytico-synthetic performance (short-term memory productivity) decreases after classes in most students. The decrease applies both to the senior and junior school students. It is possible to say that the study workload significantly affects the analytico-synthetic performance, that is, fatigue is observed.

The general conclusion about sensorimotor performance is that it goes down insignificantly after classes in 29% of students; it should be noted that there are more junior students in this group. At the same time, they display a more pronounced increase in sensorimotor performance after classes, which leads us to state that the workload has a bigger effect on the sensorimotor activity of younger children than older ones, while the effect is unequal: in most, the performance goes up, in some it goes down. There are no grounds to speak of a significant effect of the study workload on sensorimotor performance and fatigue development in this area.

The study workload doesn’t affect the level of self-regulation a lot. The group of middle school students tend to display better results after classes, possibly as a result of higher motivation in the study (or in the learning activities in general). In the senior school students’ group, a decrease in the level of self-regulation is observed more often than in the junior group. This could result from either a higher workload or from a decrease in motivation. On the whole, we can state that the sphere of self-regulation doesn’t undergo considerable fatigue during the classes.