Interactive methods of teaching english in modern school

Zobnina Nataliya Igorevna

Зобнина Наталья Игоревна

учитель английского языка

школа - гимназия № 20 имени Титова,

Южно-казахстанская область, г. Шымкент,

РеспубликаКазахстан

INTERACTIVE METHODS OF TEACHING ENGLISH
IN MODERN SCHOOL

Great teachers are nimble, observant, and responsive, always keeping an open mind about how to best engage their students and get them excited about learning — and that means considering trying out different interactive teaching styles in the classroom.

Interactive teaching styles are designed around a simple principle: without practical application, students often fail to comprehend the depths of the study material. Interactive teaching is also beneficial for you as the teacher in a number of ways, including:

Measurable student accomplishments: Teachers making use of interactive teaching styles are better equipped to assess how well students master a given subject material.

Flexibility in teaching: Applying training methods that involve two-way communications will enable you to make quick adjustments in processes and approaches.

Practice makes perfect: Interactive instruction enhances the learning process.

Student motivation: Two-way teaching dispels student passivity, and when more students are engaged, you’ll have much more fun too.

Applying interactive education

Whereas students often lose interest during lecture-style teaching, interactive teaching styles promote an atmosphere of attention and participation. Make it interesting. Make it exciting. Make it fun. As you well know, telling is not teaching and listening is not learning.

Teaching grammar has to be one of toughest tasks a teacher faces. We all know that grammar skills are essential to students' success in their ability to communicate orally and in writing, and in nearly all other areas of life! So the more fun we can have with grammar and the more varied approaches we can use to teach it, the more likely our pupils are to 'get it.'

It is taken for granted; there is a great variety of different teaching methods that teachers use which do not focus on solely teaching grammar. It is important to realize, however, that pupils have different learning needs. Some will take a more logical approach, whereas others will be more inclined to simply use the language as they receive it. An effective teaching method is learning how to blend these two together. Some schools will focus entirely on language acquisition. They will forgo the use of teaching grammar techniques. However, when it comes to teaching in schools and other institutions this might be required. There are many different ways of making grammar a little more interesting. A variety of different games can be designed in order to help with this.

1. Including Games

Games and fun activities are a vital part of teaching English as a foreign language. Whether you’re teaching adults or children, games will liven up your lesson and ensure that your students will leave the classroom wanting more.

They can be used to warm up the class before your lesson begins, during the lesson to give students a break when you’re tackling a tough subject, or at the end of class when you have a few minutes left to kill. There are literally hundreds, probably thousands, of games that you can play with your learners. EFL games are used to test vocabulary, practice conversing, learn tenses - the list is endless. This will often get the learners motivated to get the answers right and therefore allow them to learn much faster. Amongst teenagers this can be particularly effective, whether the class is divided into two or more groups. By turning it into a competition, everyone will become a lot more active and a lot of fun can be had by every-one. Grammar games are particularly useful in an ESL classroom to make sure that grammar points are being absorbed by students.

2. Telling a Story

Another way to make grammar a little easier to digest is to teach it in the form of storytelling. Perhaps get the learners to form a “story stick” where-by everyone contributes a line to the overall story. If there are any grammar mistakes in this, then leave it until the end. When the entire story is finished and writ-ten out on the board, get a learner to come up to it and make the appropriate corrections. With participation from the class, have the entire text corrected. Ask the students questions as to why certain tenses are the way they are. Having some-thing to focus on like this will keep their attention and therefore allow for the understanding of grammatical structures to sink in a lot easier.

3. Using songs

Music is often a great way of getting students to learn. By singing phrases, this will become embedded into the mind a lot faster.This is particularly true if one is teaching children or even teenagers. In order to do this, find a song that uses several tenses or differing grammar points. Get the students to sing along, and then write up the lyrics on the board. Get them then to sing it together, getting the tune into their head. After this, one can then quiz them on what tenses or grammatical points are in the actual text. Make this short and quick, and once they get the hang of it have them sing the song again. After this, try and make a game out of it. Select individuals to say or sing a verse or phrase from the song, but change the tense. This way they will be able to practice with using the different tenses and verb forms, but in a much more light-hearted way.

4. Making class communicative

Communicative classes focus on communication and language use by learners rather than theory and repetitive practice. Make a habit of encouraging your pupils to use the language that they know to get their meaning across, even when the grammar isn’t perfect. In grammar class, include speaking activities and give your learners a chance to put their language use to practical applications whenever possible.

5. Team up

Using group activities, role plays, discussions and other such activities will both keep your learners interested in classroom activities and keep them account-able to one another for class participation and task accomplishments. Pupils sometimes will disappoint their teacher and feel little regret. Disappointing class-mates and friends, on the other hand, may be less desirable to them. Take ad-vantage of this by assigning and rewarding group tasks when possible.

6. Start Simple

If you are preparing pupils for a college entrance examination or any other kind of test, then simply knowing grammar structures may be the key to passing it. If the learners have been doing grammar all along but still don’t understand the mechanics, then it is important to make sure that they receive a crash course in it.

English grammar can be relatively simple when it is all laid out. Start from the be-ginning, give them a few practice exercises and let them work their way up. It is also a good idea to create a “grammar book” whereby the students can write down the various sentence structures and tenses, class by class, so that they will always have a reference.

7. Make Presentation giving your own examples

In this stage the new language in a meaningful context can be presented. I find that building up stories on the board, using realia or flashcards and miming are fun ways to present the language.

For example, when presenting the 2nd conditional, teachers may draw a picture of themselves with thought bubbles of lots of money, a sports car, a big house and a world map.

• And then ask students what to make up the situation.

• "If I had a lot of money, I would buy a sports car and a big house."

• It is good to practice and drill the sentence orally before writing it on the board (positive, negative, question and short answer).

• Then focus on form by asking the students questions.

E.g."What do we use after 'if'?" and on meaning by asking the students questions to check that they have understood the concept (E.g."Do I have lots of money?" No."What am I doing?" Imagining.)

Some say that grammar, though the most important aspect of language learning is also the most boring. That does not have to be true in your grammar classroom. When you make a point of being creative and flexible in your class-room, your students will be engaged in class and will become more successful learners of the English language.

СПИСОК ЛИТЕРАТУРЫ

1. Harmer, Jeremy. The Practice of English Language Teaching. Essex:LongmanPress. (2001).

2. «Интенсивный курс обучения иностранному языку», Е. В. Макарова, Т. В. Пархамович.

3. Христорождественская Л.П. “English course”

4. Oxford Picture Dictionary Book (2nd Edition)

5. http://www.teachhub.com

6. www.teachingenglish.org.uk

7. http://www.educationworld.com

Адрес публикации: https://www.prodlenka.org/metodicheskie-razrabotki/287246-interactive-methods-of-teaching-english-in-mo