Improve basic skills in English

Any language consists of a number of skills, such as speaking, listening, reading and spelling. Grammar knowledge can also be distinguished as a separate skill. Usually people expect that enhanced mastery of one of these skills will automatically develop all the others. But in reality, this does not happen. There is undoubtedly a relationship between skills, but it is not sufficient for full-fledged related development. So, for example, you can learn to understand what you read, but you can neither speak, nor write correctly, nor understand the language by ear, nor really know the grammar. For the full development of each skill, each of them must be given full attention. Developing all skills at the same time is not very convenient, difficult, and, perhaps, incorrect. It is best to start with the development of listening perception, as language, nevertheless, in its origins is an audio system. The development of listening comprehension will lay a good foundation for developing the correct pronunciation.

In the study of languages, he trades many deceivers who are trying to earn money by offering methods that supposedly do not require any effort. They claim that the language can be learned in a dream or by looking at a monitor screen blinking at a frequency of 25 frames per second. This is all nonsense. If you do not mind your time and money, you can easily see this. Do not believe any suggestions that mean learning a language without thoughtful, focused and long work. When enrolling in courses, buying any methodology, or making an appointment with a tutor, remember that they will give you mainly a guide to action, which will give you no more than 10% of the practice you need, and that’s what you pay for. If you do not do with this ninety-odd percent of independent work to develop the skills you need, you will be able to speak the language very mediocre. Practice is the only way to master the language.

I would divide the process of learning a language into two stages:

• 1.    The basis of the bookmark.

• 2.    Learning through application.

At the stage of laying the foundation you will need a relatively small amount of materials that will need to be carefully worked out. This will take considerable time. Outwardly, the advancement in materials will occur rather slowly, but the internal work will be huge. Your brain will master the sound of new sounds and syllables, a new linguistic melody and dynamics, your speech organs will get used to the new pronunciation, and the subconscious mind will catch new patterns of expression of thought. In this case, a foreign language will become more understandable.

The end of the first stage can be considered the moment when you feel ready to independently master the information flow in a new language. This implies that you can intuitively correctly pronounce words unknown to you, and you will also have sufficient vocabulary to guess the meaning of words unknown to you in the context of perceived information.

At the second stage, you just need to honestly practice the language you are learning. At the beginning of the stage, using the new language will be quite difficult, since you will come across a lot of unknown words and expressions, the meaning of which you will have to guess, but as you use the language of unknown words and expressions, it will become less and less, and with a sufficient intensity of the use of the language after a while you can reach a level that will correspond to fluency in the language.

Please note that at the second stage it is necessary to use not the materials of training courses, but real, unadapted information from the “living” language environment. The fact is that the supply of words and expressions in language courses is specially limited to the most common patterns. As a result, if you try to use materials from other courses in the second stage to increase the volume of your practice, you will really just stagnate and the “live” non-adapted language will remain a “prickly cactus” for you.

There is an opinion that it is possible to develop conversational skills only in “live” communication with a partner. Practice shows that this is not so. At the initial stage of the development of speaking skills, the partner will only bother you, and you will him. A partner will be needed later to apply and maintain acquired skills.

To develop conversational skills, it is enough just to engage in speaking aloud for the speakers and characters of the dialogs. You need to start speaking when you can clearly grasp the sound and understand what you are going to pronounce, otherwise it is very likely that you will learn to speak with mistakes. To make sure that you clearly understand what you are going to say, try to play the sentence in your head with the voice of the announcer, and then compare this to the original. Until spontaneous playback in the head matches the original, you should not pronounce it.

You need to pronounce loudly, clearly, trying to copy the speaker as much as possible with your voice, repeating all the nuances of the continuous pronunciation of words, as well as intonation. By nature, speaking skills are mostly the motor memory of your speech organs. Motor memory is formed solely through regular repetitions of any action. Therefore, the development of conversational skills is of great importance to the systematic repetition of the same phrases aloud, preferably in different contexts and situations.

Thus, to develop conversational skills you need audio recordings, and it is desirable that these are recordings of colloquial speech. Such examples of colloquial speech can be dialogues from films. Without audio recordings, you cannot form the correct pronunciation, and your speech will be funny.

If this is your first time pronouncing an expression in a new language for you, this may turn out to be a rather difficult task. Dont be upset. Everything passes through this, including native speakers in early childhood, but because you are no longer a child, you will achieve results much faster. The main technique for overcoming difficulties with pronouncing a foreign phrase is to start pronouncing it not immediately as a whole, but with a small element that you can grasp. Then add new pieces to this element until you utter the whole phrase. Your motor memory will help you with this.

To develop good conversational skills, you will have to speak a rather large number of texts. At the same time, thanks to listening to audio recordings, the skills of speech perception by ear will simultaneously develop.

With the development of conversational skills, you will encounter such a difficulty as the need to re-play individual phrases of the text. Even with the help of modern digital technology, this is not so simple. The best way out of this difficulty is to use specialized programs for learning foreign languages in which synchronized texts are used. An example of such a program is an English conversational online course program.

Sources used:

• 1.    Benediktov B.A. Psychology - mastery of a foreign language. - Minsk .: Higher. school, 1974

• 2.    Alkhazishvili A.A. Fundamentals of mastering oral foreign speech: Textbook. manual for students of ped. in-com.- M .: Education, 1988

• 3.    Alkhazishvili A.A. Psychological Foundations of Teaching Oral Foreign Language Tbilisi: Ganatleb Publishing House, 1974

• 4.    Artyomov V.A. Psychological prerequisites for enhancing the teaching of foreign languages. // IASH, 1971

• 5.    Vereninova Zh.B. Song as a methodological technique for the phonetic testing of English middle sonants // IYASH., 2000

"Экономика и социум" №2(69) 2020