In this article is given information about the ways of teaching intensive reading with the help of activity story retelling. The main importance motivate the students to use the foreign language while teaching them the language concepts, the students will greatly improve their communicative competence.
Данная статья информирует о способах обучения интенсивного чтения с помощью упражнения пересказ рассказа. Главной важностью является побуждение студентов к употреблению иностранного языка во время обучения языковым концепциям. Студенты также значительно улучшат коммуникативные способности.
If we, the foreign language teachers, we can provide or create a life-like, real situation in which our students are exposed to adequate foreign language inputs, and motivate the students to use the foreign language while teaching them the language concepts, the students will greatly improve their communicative competence.
We know that the teachers as well as students are well aware that in a language learning situation, all classroom activities are contrived for language learning. It is the teacher's responsibility to plan realistic activities, or acquisition activities, that are relevant to the students' everyday life and communication needs. So in my class, besides explaining the text and doing exercises, we often provide the students with some interesting stories to read. Instead of giving all the students the same stories, we give them different ones.
Always, after reading, the students are supposed to tell their stories to a partner in their own words or use the words they remember from their readings. In any case, they are not allowed to read the story to each other. We know that, when this is done each student is asked to retell the story heard from his or her partner to the whole class. The intent is to make the students focus on the meaning they want to get across, not focus on the linguistic forms that are being used. In telling or retelling the story, the students are allowed to use gestures and facial expressions, but not native language. They are informed that each pair of students will share the marks for the story's retelling. The marks are mainly based on the meaning of the story, not on the language. In this kind of activity, the students do not feel like they are just doing exercises. They are eager to tell their partner the plot of the story, so they let the language take care of itself. The principle here is, as Krashen puts it, «Normal conversation tends to be quite rapid, and the speakers' attention is usually on what is being said, not how it is being said». [Krashen, 1983, 56 p.]
However, improving the intensive reading is dealt to learner’s responsibility. The self-directed statement activity places the responsibility for communication chiefly on the learners themselves. The teacher's role is to prepare proper topics. For instance, when we were teaching the text of «My Wonderful Lousy Poem», we asked the students to try to fully understand both the mother's love and the father's love as stated by the author. We allowed them 10 minutes to write out their understanding of both kinds of love according to their own experiences. In their preparation, they concentrated on collecting evidence from events that happened in their daily lives. When they reported on their individual understanding of the terms to the class, the most important thing was to get the meaning across as effectively as they could. They were not to be overly concerned with using exactly the correct words or using them accurately. Circumlocution in this activity was not only permitted, it was desirable if it aided communication. It is what they said that counted, not how they said it. Something interesting happened: When some of them were telling about their views of the love shown by their parents, they used the exact sentences and expressions from the text. When asked if they deliberately recited these sentences, they answered negatively. They said that they did not intend to copy them. These words just flowed right out of their mouths. They could not tell which sentence was the author's and which was theirs. This meant that these expressions were no longer expressions appearing just in the text, but they became part of the learners' language.
Therefore, all foreign language teachers are well aware that there exists a gap between linguistic competence and communicative competence. Some students know much about the language they are learning and are good at syntax, pronunciation, and vocabulary. But when put on their own, they often simply cannot readily use patterns and vocabulary spontaneously and fluently in a novel situation. There is often stumbling and hesitation, sometimes long and very complete silence. During the last term's final examination, the foreign teacher said to each student as the student handed in his or her paper, “Happy Spring Festival!” or “Happy Navruz!” A few responded in kind by saying “Thank you, or” “You too.” Most of the students only smiled and left the classroom without saying a word. Quite often, in spontaneous situations like this, there are no responses. It's not that the students do not know the correct response; it is that they are not confident to respond when confronted with a real-world use of the foreign language. Of course this kind of phenomenon is not confined only to speaking but also to writing, reading, and listening. So, in order to improve a learner's progress in developing communicative competence, foreign language teachers should devise a variety of activities in which the students can use the foreign language as a means to communicate. Our students have benefited from all the acquisition activities we devised. Although, it is not easy to create adequate means to obtain real communication in language teaching, we should use the techniques we know to narrow the gap between linguistic competence and communicative competence.
In conclusion, generally speaking, this kind of exercise gave them confidence in talking to someone in a foreign language and in expressing real ideas instead of quoting from the book. With this kind of activity, students do not feel that they are merely doing exercises. Instead, they are communicating with others. Whenever we devise these kinds of exercises, we have Krashen's advice on second-language acquisition in mind: «Activities in the classroom focus at all times on topics which are interesting and relevant to the students and encourage them to express their ideas, opinions, desires, emotions and feelings».
References:
1. Bouchard, D., and L. Spaverta. 1980. A TEFL anthology. Washington, DC: United States Information Agency.
2. Enright, D., and M. McCloskey. 1985. Yes, talking!: Organizing the classroom to promote second language acquisition TESOL Quarterly, 19, 3, pp. 431–453.
3. Krashen, S. 1983. The natural approach. San Francisco: Alemany Press.
4. Odlin, T. 1990. Language transfer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
5. Rod, E. 1992. Instructed second language acquisition. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
