Lecture 1: General problems of Foreign Language teaching

Synqwain. The word synqwain comes from the French word "five". Synqwain is a specific poem (without) a rhyme, consisting of five lines in which there is generalized information about the studying topic, event or phenomenon. This information is characterized by different word from different points of view. Making up Synqwain is an important skill permitting the students to express and state complex ideas, feeling and imaginations by a few words. The process of making up the synqwain helps to comprehend the topic better. We should follow the next rules of the synqwain;
1. In the first line we call the theme by one word (a noun).
2. The second line - the description of the theme by two adjectives.
3. The third line - the description of the action by three words. (Following to the content of the topic).
4. The fourth line - the phrase consisting of 4 words, characterizing the attitude and feelings to the topic.
5. The last line contains a synonym to the name of the topic.
Let’s study the following examples of synqwain of different notions (or phenomena).
^{1 1}
day nature
^{1 2 1 2}
long, busy beautiful, luxurious
^{1 2 3 1 2 3}
full of different events full of sounds, smells
^{1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4}
make us work hard impresses, inspires, admires people
^{5 5}
time landscape
Synqwain helps to develop a creative approach to make up important ideas and choose necessary words, characterizing the describing notion or phenomena.
A ten - minute essay. Using such technique as cross-discussion or usual discussion, the students state and hear a great number of ideas, which may be forgotten if they aren’t fixed. Then the teacher may do the work in the form of a ten-minute essay after the discussion.
Three-stage interview. As other technique of interactive methods, a three-staged interview involves all the students into the participation in all activities. The students are divided into "initial" groups in 4-6. They get aquatinted with the discussing topic, and then in pairs take an interview from each other to clear out the ideas. Then each student presents partner's ideas to the "initial" out the ideas. The group discusses all ideas they come to the same opinion.
Interactive method of teaching English appeared after the Communicative Method. They appeared in the result of the development of the new informational technologies. The teacher and students equal partners in the studying progress and all students are involved in this process. In interactive Methods the opinions, ideas and points of view of all students are taken into consideration and fixed. Every students has the opportunity to mark his individual contribution into the fulfillment of the tasks, all students share their ideas, points of view and knowledge. Both a teacher and a student are partners and all actions are produced in the atmosphere of cordiality and mutual support.
Thus the techniques of interactive methods permit us not only to get new knowledge and information, but also to develop the cognitive activity of students at the lessons, to draw their interests to the topic of the lesson, to develop critical thinking and form the communicative habits and skills. They help to achieve better results in the learning process, develop free discussion of questions and conversation practice.
Most of the 12 principles listed and discussed form foundation stones for structuring a theory of interaction in the language classroom. Consider the following selected relationships.
Automaticity: True human interaction is best accomplished when focal attention is on meanings and messages and not on grammar and other linguistic forms. Learners are thus freed from keeping language in a controlled mode and can more easily proceed to automatic modes of processing.