Chapter Features of teaching English to children of primary school age

2.1. The content of teaching pronunciation in elementary grades
According to V.S. Mukhin, the first years of a child's life are sensitive to the development of speech and cognitive processes. It is during this period that children develop a flair for linguistic phenomena, peculiar general linguistic abilities - the child begins to enter the reality of the figurative-sign system. In childhood, the development of speech goes in two main directions: firstly, the vocabulary is intensively recruited and the morphological system of the language spoken by others is assimilated; secondly, speech provides a restructuring of cognitive processes. At the same time, the growth of the dictionary, the development of the grammatical structure of speech and cognitive processes directly depend on the conditions of life and education. Individual variations here are very large, especially in speech development. Let us turn to a consistent analysis of the speech and cognitive processes of the child.
By the time of entering school, the child's vocabulary increases so much that he can freely explain himself to another person on any occasion related to everyday life and within the scope of his interests. If at the age of three a normally developed child uses up to 500 or more words, then a six-year-old - from 3000 to 7000 words. The vocabulary of a child in elementary grades consists of nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, numerals and connecting conjunctions.
V.S. Mukhina says that the development of speech is not only due to those linguistic abilities that are expressed in the child's own instinct for language. The child listens to the sound of the word and evaluates this sound.
The child, if some regularities of speech are explained to him, will easily turn his activity to the cognition of speech from a new side for him and, while playing, will make an analysis.
Primary schoolchildren have an orientation to the systems of their native language. The sound shell of the tongue is the subject of active, natural activity for a child of six to eight years. By the age of six or seven, the child already masters a complex system of grammar in colloquial speech to such an extent that the language he speaks becomes his native language.
A child with special training can pronounce words in order to identify the sound composition, while overcoming the habitual stereotype of pronunciation of words that has developed in live speech. The ability to produce sound analysis of words contributes to the successful mastery of reading and writing.
Without special training, a child will not be able to conduct a sound analysis of even the simplest words. A child who does not know how to analyze the sound composition of a word cannot be considered retarded. He's just not trained. Children must understand sound recording, hear and feel the meaning and expressive power of their native language.⁵
The need for communication determines the development of speech. Throughout childhood, the child intensively masters speech. The development of speech turns into speech activity.
Speech communication implies not only a richly represented variety of words used, but also the meaningfulness of what is being said. Meaningfulness provides knowledge, understanding of what is at stake, and mastery of the meanings and meanings of verbal constructions of the native language.
The main function of speech is communication, communication. A six-seven-year-old child is already able to communicate at the level of contextual speech - speech that accurately and fully describes what is being said, and therefore is quite understandable without direct perception of the situation being discussed. A retelling of the story he heard, his own story about what happened is available to the younger student. In a child with developed speech, we observe speech means that he appropriates from adults and uses in his contextual speech.
If a child is listener-oriented, according to Mukhina, seeks to describe in more detail the situation in question, seeks to explain the pronoun, which is so easily ahead of the noun, this means that he already understands the value of intelligible communication.
In the conditions of a school lesson, when the teacher gives the child the opportunity to answer questions or asks to retell the text he heard, he, as a student, is required to work on the word, on the phrase and sentence, as well as on coherent speech.
Modern methodological manuals for teachers offer techniques and methods of working with younger students, which act as a condition that organizes the child's mastery of oral and written speech, as a condition that facilitates entry into a real language.
The purpose of teaching pronunciation is to master the auditory -pronunciation side of speaking and reading:
- the ability to listen and hear, the development of phonemic hearing;
- pronunciation skills, i.e. mastery of the articulatory base of a foreign language, methods of intonation brought to automatism;
- development of inner speech (internal pronunciation) as the psychophysiological basis of external speech.
With almost all the object of phonetic material studied at school, students get acquainted at the initial stage of education. The sequence of introducing new sounds and into tones is determined not by their relative difficulty, but by those speech patterns that students get acquainted with.
The methodology distinguishes between imitative and analytical- imitative ways of getting acquainted with new phonetic material. The imitative method focuses not on the conscious assimilation of the features of articulation, but on the auditory perception of speech and its imitation. This pays off in a children's classroom, but by the fifth grade, students partially lose their imitation skills, because they cannot imitate correctly. Therefore, this approach is not acceptable for secondary schools.⁶
According to V. M. Filatova, the analytical- imitative approach combines various ways of creating new sound patterns: both the description of articulation and imitation. In the course of fulfilling the rules-instructions given by the teacher, students master the concept of alveoli, interdental sound, aspiration, etc. Thanks to this preparation, imitation becomes more accessible and effective. With the modern approach adopted in most educational institutions, the analytical - imitative method is used for explanation and training. If the child's ear is not trained and cannot correctly reproduce the sound, the teacher uses a rule-instruction, often suggesting which language to start from. For example, it is possible to explain the articulation of the English sound [r] through the Russian sound [g], since the position of articulation is very similar for them.
When getting acquainted with sounds, it is necessary to take into account the methodological typology of sounds. The sounds of the first group are usually introduced imitatively . The explanation of the sounds of the second and third groups consists of four components, the sequence of which may vary:
1) sound demonstration;
2) an explanation of how to pronounce it;
3) exercises in differentiation;
4) reproduction of a new sound by students. It is important to note here that the speech of the teacher at the stage of explanation, as a rule, is slightly exaggerated and demonstrative. Differentiation exercises help establish the distinctive features of a new sound. To do this, the teacher pronounces the sounds of the studied language and the native language, with which the studied sound can be confused, and asks the students to note the new sound. For example, when introducing the sound [æ] - [e] - [e] - [ə].
Filatov V.M. says that familiarization with the main rhythmic-intonational patterns is carried out in the process of mastering speech patterns. Here, the unity of imitation and explanation is clearly manifested as ways of introducing new material.
The age of six-year-old children implies the inclusion of the process of learning pronunciation in the context of play activity. Purposeful work on the formation of auditory and articulation skills in children is carried out at a special stage of the lesson - pronunciation exercises. It is based on an onomatopoeic game with interesting and entertaining plots, the constant character of which is a cheerful English language - Mr. tone . Children are introduced to this character in their first English lesson.
Teacher: Victoria told me something amazing. We have a tongue in our mouth. His name is Mr. tone . Our mouth is his cozy house, and his teeth are a fence. When Mr. _ tone ­ gue gets up, he looks out the window and enjoys the good weather: [ɔ: - ɔ: - ɔ:). (Children repeat sounds.). Then he cleans the house, knocks dust out of the rugs: [ d - d - d ]. (Children repeat sounds.) Place the tip of the tongue on the cusps behind the upper teeth. Good work: [ gud ]. (Children repeat.)
Then Mr. _ Tongue rings the bell and calls all the neighbors like this: [ nI ŋ— nI ŋ]. (Children repeat . ) And now that everyone has come, Mr. Tongue says hello : [ gud'm ɔ: niŋ ] . (Children repeat.)
This is how babies learn to pronounce the sounds they need to greet.