Formation of students’ communicative competence through the use of modern pedagogical methods

In pedagogical practice, a problem arose: a contradiction between a general decrease in the level of speech culture of students, and the requirement of society - the development of a linguistic personality capable of analyzing information, creating his own speech utterance and applying the results of intellectual activity in practice.

In the process of teaching a discipline using modern teaching aids, a person is formed who can act not only according to the model, but also independently receive the necessary information from the largest possible number of sources, who can analyze it, put forward hypotheses, build models, experiment and draw conclusions, make decisions in difficult situations. The student’s personality develops, its language culture develops, students are prepared for a free and comfortable life in an information society.

All the exercises offered to students can be divided into several groups:

• •    Exercises helping to master the concept itself, i.e. to highlight the corresponding signs of the phenomenon, to learn how to define them and to bring them under the concept of a specific speech "product" (analysis of the finished text);

• •    Exercises aimed at the formation of specific speech skills (editing statements, continuation of a given beginning, speech gymnastics);

• •    Exercises of a creative nature, aimed at developing the entire complex of speech skills in students (creating their own statements).

Thus, these exercises, which need to be given a situational character, will allow students to lead from acquaintance with certain speech concepts to mastering the necessary speech actions on the basis of these concepts and then to their own use of the acquired skills in speech practice.

The concept of "speech culture" should be considered in several aspects: science, characteristics of speech quality, academic discipline.

Culture of speech is a linguistic science dealing with the problems of speech normalization, developing recommendations for the skillful use of language.

The culture of speech is such a choice and such an organization of linguistic means, which in a given communication situation, subject to modern linguistic norms and communication ethics, can provide the greatest effect in achieving the set communication tasks.

A qualitative assessment of an utterance from the point of view of the culture of speech involves answering the following questions:

• 1.    Is the speech correct, is it built according to literary norms?

• 2.    Is speech “good”, appropriate in a particular situation, effective, skillful?

• 3.    Does speech comply with the rules of communication ethics (speech etiquette)?

So, three constituent components determine the essence of speech culture - normative, communicative, ethical.

The first is normative. The protection of the norms of the literary language is a matter of national importance, since the literary language is one of the factors (along with the unity of the territory and economic life) that unite the nation into a single whole.

The second aspect is communicative. Sometimes a text in which all norms are impeccably observed, nevertheless, does not fulfill the task. The fact is that in each specific communication situation, from all linguistic means, it is necessary to choose those that will fulfill the set communicative task with maximum completeness and efficiency. The development of the communicative aspect of speech culture is possible only in free speech activity, any dictatorship and creativity are incompatible.

The third aspect of speech culture is ethical. In every society, there are generally accepted norms of behavior, which, within the framework of the culture of speech, are defined as speech etiquette. Already ancient rhetoric (manuals on eloquence) indicated a close connection between speech and its content, and it was the latter that was given priority in evaluating the utterance.

The first and main criterion for good speech is a moral criterion: speech should be truthful, and the goals of the communicant should be noble.

The richness and truthfulness of the statement are important extra-linguistic factors in the effectiveness of communication. The rest of the criteria for assessing the level of speech culture are directly related to the language:

cultural and literate speech is correct (normalized), accurate, logical, appropriate, pure, expressive, rich speech.

Based on these aspects of speech culture, it is possible to formulate several rules that will be accepted by students in the process of communication.

• •    Speech must be competent and correct, then it will be understandable for the listener.

• •    The student freely and independently, realizing the goals of his speech, chooses language means and is responsible for his choice.

• •    The speaker’s speech should be truthful and sincere, not violating generally accepted norms of behavior and morality.

• •    In the process of communication, it is necessary to maintain a culture of listening.

These rules must be understood and accepted by all participants in communication, since their implementation will ensure the effectiveness of communication. The central concept of communication is “speech act”. Thus, firstly, the speaker’s personal responsibility for his or her word is emphasized; secondly, the priority is given to the spontaneous “inventiveness” of speech (there can be no reproduction of finished speech here).

Finally, speech culture is an academic discipline, the main goal of which is the formation and improvement of speech culture.

What are the requirements for good speech? What signs characterize it?

• •    Correctness of speech, that is, compliance with the literary and linguistic norms adopted in a certain era: pronunciation, stress, education and use of grammatical forms, word usage.

• •    Accuracy - the communicative quality of speech, manifested in the use of words in full accordance with their meaning. Accuracy of speech presupposes the most complete and adequate expression of thought, the addressee and the situation. Accuracy of speech is the correspondence of words to content. The true master of the word Leo Tolstoy noted that the word is the expression of thought - and therefore it must correspond to what it expresses.

Areas of work on the culture of speech:

• •    Compliance with the norms of the Russian literary language: phonetic (pronunciation); grammatical (morphology and syntax); word-formation, lexical (correct word use and lexical compatibility).

• •    Improvement of oral and written speech: "so to speak it is possible, but it is possible and better."

• •    The problem of choosing language means: correct and appropriate.

These are the basic concepts, definitions, aspects and qualities of speech culture.