Forming the phonetic competence in a foreign language at the secondary schools

This article considers about forming the phonetic competence in a foreign language at the secondary schools by the help of various types of exercises. Here are given the basic requirements for improving the pronunciation skills either.

Key words: language, pronunciation skills, fluency, rhythmic intonation, listening skills, verbal communication, phonetic exercises, training exercises

Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies the methods of education of human speech sounds. Material of phonetics is a combination of all audio equipment (phonemes and intonemes).

Language as a communication tool has emerged as the audio language. The listener will not understand it if he does not know own pronunciation skills. Having solid pronunciation skills ensures the normal functioning of all types of speech activity.

Phonetics is not taught in school, as independent and mastering pronunciation skills it is carried out in the courses of training speaking and reading. Requirements to pronunciation skills determined on the basis of the principle of approximation that is the correct pronunciation.

The followings are basic requirements for pronunciation skills:

1. Phonematicity — suggests the degree of accuracy of phonetic speech processing, it is not hard enough for the understanding of its interlocutor.
2. Fluency — the degree of automation of pronunciation skills, allowing students to speak at the right pace of speech. (110–130 in German language; 110–150 in English language signs per minute.). Students must master the intonation structure for the most common types of sentences. Selection of the material is done according to the following principles:

1. Compliance with the communication requirements (distinctive feature)
2. Stylistic principle (the literary language or dialect). [5–90]

At the initial stage of training focuses on the automation of pronunciation skills, and at the last stage explains the general laws of pronunciation skills in native and foreign language.

Under the speech pronunciation listening skills refers to the skills of phonemic correct pronunciation of all the sounds in the flow of speech, understanding all the sounds with the listening speech.

Under the rhythmic intonation skills refers to the skills of intonation and rhythmically correct execution of speech and understanding the speech of others.

When we talk about teaching phonetics at school there is considered the formation of phonemic articulation, intonation and rhythmic patterns. The program provides the students mastering the sounds of the English language, tone of the narrative (affirmative and negative), imperative and interrogative sentences (Grade 5), intonation offers a frame structure (Grade 6) and intonation of complex sentences (Grade 7).

1) the need to develop an oral-language skills at the outset, already in an introductory course;

2) the need to consider phonetic difficulties. The leading method of mastering the pronunciation is repeated listening and imitative most accurate sound reproduction and subsequent use of it in the speech flow.

Phonetic exercises are the decisive factor in creating pronunciation skills are the followings:

1. Exercises on the perception of a new sound to the ear:

a. speech stream — a first speech sample of a teacher speech, then in mechanical recording.

b. a separate word, in isolation, in combination with the notes master, if the phoneme of the second group;

c. followed by a first repeat reproduction of a single word, then the speech sample.

2. Exercises to reproduce phonetic phenomenon which are used collective and individual forms of work.

a. reproduction of individual students and the teacher correcting possible errors.

b. choral play together with the teacher.

d. The individual playback of individual students in order to control the formation of the right auditory-speech motor sample.

3. Training exercises for the automation of pronunciation of speech skills in conditional phonetic speech directed exercises (eg, rhymes). These types of exercises are conventionally speech exercises with monological and dialogical nature, which study the phonemes trained in the conditional verbal communication in teaching speech. [1–78]

Here we give examples for the exercises for development of phonetic and intonation hearing:

1. Verbally divide the word into sounds and call them. Determine the number of syllables in words heard.
2. Set the number of short and long vowels in the words heard.
3. Locate the column and mark words in the order in which they were heard.
4. Scroll to the ear of a coherent text with the words sound trainees and record them in a spell.
5. Determine the number of words in the sentences listened.
6. Identify and write down at the hearing the last word of each sentence listened segment.

Exercises for formation the pronunciation skills:

1. Listen to a series of sounds and raise your hand when you hear a given sound.
2. Listen to a couple of sounds and raise your hand when you hear the new sound.
3. Raise your hand when you hear the interrogative, declarative, negative sentence.
4. Emphasize the word in a sentence, to which the stress falls.
5. What word containing a certain sound.
6. Speak after the speaker pairs of words, paying attention to the differences in the pronunciation of sounds.
7. Say proverb patter first slowly and then quickly (quietly — loud).
8. Make a phonetic text-based markup on the base of voice teacher or speaker, please read the text aloud. [3–103]

While forming the phonetic competence in a foreign language at the secondary schools teaching listening plays the most important role.

Listening is the perception and understanding the speech with hearing. Psychological basis of understanding are the processes of perception, recognition of language, understanding their values, the processes of anticipation (guessing) and interpretation of information, processes of the information groups, their synthesis, retention of information in memory, reasoning processes.

Listening from a psychological point of view is a complex hierarchical structure, in which the three levels can be identified:

‒ causative — motivation;

‒ research — oriented (analysis of listened text, singling out the information);

‒ executive (student’s responding to a speech verbally and nonverbally).

1. Phase of the establishment of relations at the level of supply (connection between the elements of the proposal)
2. On the paragraph level (semantic level);
3. At the level of the text (semantic links between the ligatures);
4. Phase of meaning formulating.

The nature of forecasting and understanding depends on the level of language proficiency and, accordingly, the level of development of verbal hearing at this stage, the auditor's experience, awareness of the subject (subject audited the text).

All these components of listening allow a person to actualize the hearing samples of linguistic phenomenon (speech and intonation patterns), its generalized paradigmatic and syntactic structures, thus ensuring the correct prediction and subsequent meaning forming.

With the lack of formation of these components listening process occurs with more or less difficulty.

By the psychological factors there are some of the features of auditory memory, its «capacity» — the ability to hold a listening text (sentence, paragraph) of a certain length and depth (i.e., syntactic complexity). It was found that the proposals of the same length, but the difference of structured formedness present unequal difficulty to read and understand by hearing that determined by the characteristics of short-term verbal (auditory) memory.

The more complex are the syntax proposals (the larger inserts, syntax, sentence components), the more difficult to keep it in memory until the end of the perception.

After all, for understanding the meaning of the entire sentence the audited must keep the beginning of sentences in memory. Psychological difficulties of audition are caused as audited speech (live or referred in the manual recording), situational dialogic or contextual monologue speech, speech of acquaintance or a stranger (speaker), etc. Experience shows that the quality of listening depends on the nature of speech: speech in direct communication is better understood (ceteris paribus), than are in the manual recording. Because understanding the live speech is facilitated by extra-linguistic factors such as the situation, gestures, facial expressions, articulating.

Situational dialogic speech in the manual recording is generally understood with great difficulty than the speech of contextual monologue. Situational speech, followed by the visual side, is understood much more easily than contextual. Among the factors complicating listening, are also features of the speaker voice data (voice, height) and rate of speech. By linguistic difficulties of audited text refers, first of all, the presence in the text of a certain number of unknown and incomprehensible words, language material.

With regard to the difficulty of understanding the text due to ignorance of the language, it is important as the nature of language itself, and the location of unknown words in the text. Unfamiliar words in the beginning of the text are difficult to understand or properly orient the listener with respect to the subsequent detention of the audited text. The least negative impact on understanding occurs when the unfamiliar word is in the middle of the text or at the end of it, when its value is easily determined by the context. Grammatical phenomena may also be different in understanding the degree of the difficulties. [2–78]

Grammatical phenomena may also be different in the degree of understanding of the difficulties. «Non-essential» for understanding may be, for example, the end of adjectives; personal endings of verbs, if properly understood personal pronoun or a noun; the order of words in the interrogative sentence, and others.

For language difficulties should also include stylistic features of the text (figurative means, dialect, colloquial expressions, names, realities) and phonetic features of the audited speech: strangeness of pronunciation of native speaker, inappropriate or promiscuous of pronunciation and others.

References:

1. Lyubimov N. A., Phonetic aspect of communication in a foreign language. — L., 1988.
2. Porojnyak N. F., Development of phonetic skills of students of non phylological high schools // Young scientist. — 2014. — № 9. — S. 556–559.
3. Shamov A. N.., Methods of Foreign Language Teaching: general course — M.: AST: AST-Moscow: East — West, 2008.
4. Volskaya N. B., Relevant signs of interference intonation (experimentally-phonetic research on a material error accent of Russian students in the English language). Diss. Cand. Philology. Sciences. — L., 1985.
5. Witt N. V., Emotional factor in learning a foreign language //M.: MGPI 1971, p.124.