Development of junior schoolchildren foreign oral speech skills within the 12-year education system

English language is known as a language of international communication. In our country and abroad new education paradigms are being developed and engrained. Modern pedagogical technologies in our country meet the requirements of Bologna process, work of Council of Europe and aspiration of Kazakhstan to the international collaboration. Continuity of foreign-language education is realized through model of foreign language teaching according to reference levels, which consists of 6 levels: from A1 to C2 that fits the international requirements to foreign language learners’ achievements. Any person without any problems can continue getting education during all his life at the different levels of education system (at college, school, university, or post-graduate study). In the content of disciplines of the project of State Compulsory Standard of Education for the junior classes in the 12-year education system, there is the transition from the traditional study of grammar constructions of Kazakh, Russian and English languages to the development of learners’ communicative skills with organization of language mastering according to the levels of achievements [1]. At the moment the project of compulsory primary education according to the new model of 12-year-education is created and implementing actively.

In the modern foreign languages methods of teaching oral speech at schools is widely used as a means of teaching that allows a teacher to join learners to the communication from the junior stage of learning [2]. Also, the oral speech is important for the presentations of different projects, conferences, in interpersonal communication [3]. The oral speech is realized at the junior stage through common themes like: my family, my pet, animals, my favorite hero/fairytale, weather, shopping, parts of body, my house, personal information and so on. We use such themes because children know them or must know them at the 1st – 2nd forms. It is useful information, and we help children to develop their knowledge and communication skills through the learning the themes. As Vygotskiy said, we translate the area of actual development, in other words, children’s actual knowledge, to English and at the same time we develop language skills, interest to the language and, of course, we construct the basis for area of the further development.

Why do we need 12-year education model? The answer is obvious: all competitive countries have K-12 Education Model – many countries in the world – over 200 countries. They are: all countries of the Central and Eastern Europe, the USA, Japan and others [4]. Historical background of K-12 Basic Education Program is not new in the world – studies have been made since 1925 [5]. That’s why 12-year education system is being adopted in the country. But, as we said above, many countries have K-12 education model. The letter “K” means very important point for this system. “K” means “kindergarten”. So, K-12 means Kindergarten and the 12 years of elementary and secondary education [5]. But, for adopting K-12 model, we need providing pre-school education for all children in country, and after that we can do it compulsory.

The next features must be the most important for the 12-year education system, they are: critical thinking; development of skills, competences, not only knowledge; correction work in teaching of foreign language; development of multicultural, tolerant person. We think that they are the most important points for the new system and for the foreign language classes too [5].

Education is cooperative action of a teacher and a learner that is a singleminded, pedagogically organized process of personality development and acquirement of different abilities, skills and socio-cultural experience. The term “foreign-language education” was introduced by Passov E.I. [6]. Foreign-language education is aimed not only at learning, teaching and applying of basic knowledge. The aims of contemporary foreign-language education are: polylingual personality (who is able to introduce own culture and understand foreign culture, by a means of foreign language) development by a means of foreign language; parallel learning of foreign language and culture, development of polycultural personality (who is able to provide intercultural communication). According to the Conception of development of foreign languages in Kazakhstan, there are 10 principles of foreign-language education, such as followings: lifelong learning, continuity of education, communicative-intercultural interaction, etc. In this context, communication – written and especially oral – has a great significance [7]. There the following notion appears– the communicative competence.

Competence is the system of requirements to the person in any area of activity. Communicative competence is the system of requirements to the person, who are connected with the process of communication that includes: literate speech, ability to show an individual approach to the interlocutor. Communicative adequacy is a degree of person’s conformity to the system of requirements (competence). According to the points of view of many scientists [8; 9; 10] we can speak about the following – the ability to communicate on the foreign language is an indicator of trained communicative competence both – teachers’ and learners’; and it is the main means of control and diagnostics of communicative abilities, it determines a degree of achievements of foreign language learners according to European 6-levels model of achievements; it is both – an aim and a means for teaching foreign languages; it realizes a specific communicative direction of foreign language as a discipline in all institutes and steps of education [8, 95].

Learning and mastering of foreign language skills are connected with age and age characteristics of junior schoolchildren. Ignoring or denying of natural development stages inevitably leads to erroneous statement that there is the opportunity to learn any social experience, any knowledge, skills and abilities at any age, in the selection and application of appropriate methodology. So, we must consider the characteristics of the junior schoolchildren age.

Children’s ages very strongly differ in their general psychological forms. Thus, the development of the higher nervous activity of brains is a physiological basis for the development of the child's mind. It takes place in the process of complicating the life of the child’s relations, primarily with the social environment, society. The child’s mental development occurs not spontaneously, but through education and training, which are the most important factors of mental development. Each stage of child’s psychic development is characterized with not only different levels of development of child’s psychical processes, but also with the impact of social conditions which they reflect, and under the influence of which education they are formed [11, 55].

In auditory sensations there are the following features according to the types of auditory sensations. The hearing of speech sounds is called phonemic. It is formed depending on the speech environment in which the child is brought up. Mastering a foreign language includes developing a new system of phonemic hearing. Developed phonemic child’s hearing significantly affects the accuracy of written speech, especially in junior school [12, 46-85].

Child's musical hearing is formed like speech and hearing. Here is the great importance of early exposure of the child to the musical culture of mankind. Noise can cause a specific emotional disposition. In school practice there is increasingly negative impact of noise: it tires the human nervous system.

Kinesthetically sensations are among the top because they are directly related to active mobility. Development of kinesthetically sensations is one of the important study objectives. Without the development of movements and mastering them – training and employment are impossible. The formation of speech movements, the correct motor image of a word increases the children’s culture, improve the literacy of writing. Foreign language learning requires the development of such speech motor movements, which are not typical for the Russian or Kazakh languages. The rest of sensations as taste, hearing, etc., can be used to add emotional colouring to get the children information. For example, we can salt card sounds with consonants and sprinkle with sugar cards with vowels.

This will cause unusual use of senses in learning; will give an emotional reference to information that will help to improve memorization of material.

On the threshold of perception of sensations it is possible to make some comments. Not only in special schools, but in all schools we can find children with reduced auditory and visual sensitivity. So they can clearly see and hear, we need to worry about creating conditions for the best distinction of speech and the teacher’s records on the blackboard. Junior schoolchildren’ perception differs from the other age groups only with lack of experience. Thus, for example, various tasks with the use of the selectivity of perception, different illusions can cause children great interest and to supplement the lessons. For example, to describe the picture about the movie or to tell which line is longer, vertical or horizontal, etc.

There are different types of memory. Every pupil remembers and reproduces the material in different ways, and not only in better or worse way, just in its own way, because there are large individual differences in memory characteristics. Verbal-logical memory is expressed in primary memorizing and reproduction of theoretical positions, verbal formulations. Shape memory is closely connected with imagination. Children differently retell the content of films and books. Each in its own way recalls excursions, hiking, etc. Some list the sequence of events that reproduce explanations excurse-water or teacher. In the retelling of other you will see brightly the road on which was a child, will represent the people with whom he met. Some kids have more developed visual memorization; they need the visual perception of what you need to remember. Others remember best what is heard or read aloud.

Without a sufficiently developed imagination pupils’ academic work cannot be developed successfully. Reading literature, the child mentally represents what the author says. The more imagination is involved in all pupils’ cognitive processes, the more creative an educational activity will be. Therefore, the richer the experience, the more material available in his imagination and speech. The main condition of development of the child's imagination – turning it on in a variety of activities. In the process of developing of the child, the imagination develops. About emotions and feelings in the early school years scientists have found that the emotional development of a child occurs gradually in the interaction with others and in the process of the various activities – games, exercises, labor. Expanding of the child’s emotional experience, its depth and modality in the most determine the orientation of a developing personality. Younger students distinguished by high emotional sensitivity and responsiveness to all bright, unusual.

Thus, we can conclude that: the developing of critical thinking is grounded with psychological characteristics of age. The role of oral language lessons in a foreign language is also justified. The oral speech is one of the priority among study objectives (if a man speaks on the language, we can draw the conclusion that he knows it); as a learning tool, for many people the auditory channel of perception is prevalent – about 80% of people absorb information mostly by listening. At the initial stage of learning communicative approach is more rational to carry out in oral dialogic forms of communication, know the characteristics of pupils of 8-10 years to easier perception of speech and reproduction of the heard, as evidenced by numerous psychological and methodological researches in the target age group [13].

Hearing development in junior school age (both voice and music), we develop a perception of foreign speech, and using a variety of oral material (songs, poems) – we also develop pronunciation. All of the above affects the child intellectual development.

What concerns the peculiarities of the teaching foreign language at the initial level we can point out oral speech because at the initial point of teaching the speech abilities are developed the most successfully. In this case we can go in two ways: 1) from the oral speech to the reading and writing (so called separated, consistent way) or 2) way of simultaneous teaching of oral speech, reading and writing. The second way has not only one aim that is put before children or learners. According to the requirements of didactics about the graduate transition from the light to the difficult we can forget about the second, multi-aimed, way of teaching.

So, at the junior stage of education in the new, 12-year education system, it is reasonable to use the method of leading oral speech. Reason for using of this method is grounded on the idea that the language is based on the oral form of speech. In the oral speech language receives much expression, and consequently, at the foreign initial course it is important to give attention to the sounds, rhythm, intonation, and then we can begin forming of the reading and writing skills. In this way, we can put the good ground for the further study of the language.

According to aforesaid, we can draw the conclusion that the realization of the modern aims of the foreign language study (realization of the individual education, knowing of the language in conformity with the European levels, communicative orientation of study, succession of all education levels, transition to the 12-year education system with the main characteristics of this system, etc.) gives wide opportunities of the citizens of Kazakhstan, such as: diplomas of our country will be quoted abroad, circle of problems in the spheres of the entrance into foreign universities and international mobility will be narrowed, and another opportunities will appear [14]. So, foreign oral speech carries out important functions in improvement foreign language skills at the junior stage of study.