Peculiarities of application of intensive methods of training

The choice of teaching methods depends on their relevance to the goals of education. In practical activities, the teacher, choosing methods of teaching, is usually guided by these goals and the content of education. Further, he relates the methods of teaching to a specific pedagogical task, analyzes the educational situation, determines the level of development of students and the level of their development as general educational and private skills

Learning methods by themselves can not be either good or bad, their system is necessary. No means of pedagogical, even common, which usually we consider and suggestion, and explanation, and conversation, and social impact, can not always be recognized as absolutely useful. The best remedy in some cases will necessarily be the worst. The methods of teaching, by which the expected results are achieved, remaining fundamentally the same, endlessly vary depending on a variety of circumstances and conditions of the learning process.

At the present stage of the development of education, the communicative approach (Communicative language teaching) is realized in the teaching of a foreign language, an approach aimed at forming in students a semantic perception and understanding of foreign speech, as well as mastering the linguistic material for constructing speech utterances. Communicative approach in teaching foreign languages, above all, is designed to teach students to freely navigate in a foreign language environment, as well as be able to adequately respond in different language situations.

Supporting the leading positions of the communicative approach in teaching foreign languages in the 60s of the 20th century, intensive teaching methods were developed. The unconditional advantage of the intensive technique is that it creates the effect of immersion in the language environment and, as it was said before, represents training, during which the time for learning new lexical units is reduced several times. On the second day of classes the student communicates in English using the speech clichés studied in the first lesson. In addition, such training has many other advantages.

First, in the course of such training, students' memory reserves become more active and the efficiency of random memorization increases, if a large amount of information is needed. As a result, a large amount of vocabulary is assimilated, which is firmly retained in memory: for one intensive course, students absorb 25,000 new lexical units.

Secondly, the mental cognitive processes of students develop: the memory increases, the phenomenon of hypermnesia is observed, the attention of students is increased by 10-12 times, and the reading speed is increased 3-5 times.

Thirdly, in these classes, students are invited to solve various problem situations, which increases their intellectual activity.

Also, one of the main conditions for the success of applying intensive training methods in practice is the creation of a favorable working atmosphere and trusting relations between the teacher and students, which promotes the development of positive emotions that reduce the feeling of fatigue and contribute to the growth of motivation for learning.

The above circumstances, realized in the course of studies using suggestive means, contribute to a significant increase in the volume of assimilable material per unit of time, the formation of strong speech skills and abilities and the ability to be included in various communication situations.

However, the use of intensive training methods has its drawbacks.

All non-traditional ways of studying the language are focused, first of all, on the teaching of oral speech in a relatively short period. They are methods of intensive training, which implies a fairly high density of studies. A week should be held at least 25-30 academic hours with the teacher. Anything less is no longer «intense».

In addition, too much new material is introduced into such lessons, given for one presentation: 150-200 new words, 30-50 speech clichés and several typical grammatical phenomena.

These methods are aimed at the formation of speech skills with insufficient attention to speech skills, i.e. First of all, instruction is given to oral forms of communication: speaking and listening, while the written forms of communication become secondary, which can not be allowed in any case.

Also, the harmlessness of using hypnopaedia and the absence of undesirable psychological consequences as a result of its use have not been proven.

The phenomenon of hypermedia, resulting from the use of special sounds that affect the subconscious, has not received convincing confirmation.

None of the intensive methods of training is able to replace traditional methods of teaching, however, their use as one of the methods of intensifying knowledge is permissible.

Another drawback of the application of some intensive training methods is their focus on people of a certain mental makeup - suggestible, pliable. Otherwise, the impact on the psyche does not always give a result because of the different characteristics of the mental processes of students (sensations, perception, imagination, attention, memory, thinking, speech); in order to get the effect of the lessons, it is necessary to work hard and hard, that the majority of students are unable to withstand - many quickly become tired and abandon themselves.

The teacher can not provide a full-fledged formation of the student's personality, without being a bright personality, without possessing the very qualities that he is called upon to bring up from his students! The teacher should have a high professionalism, and the profession makes high demands on the ownership of their behavior, their communication, their emotions.

In intensive studies there is no unmotivated, meaningless communication. Any act of communication, any contact is always internally justified by a situation improvised by the teacher, a frank game. Hence the importance of «theatricalization» in intensive training, hence, to the highest degree, the creative nature of the classes. Not to mention coercion, every pattern, any boredom is contraindicated in intensive training.

At any time, the instructor must provide an optimal psychological climate, stimulating the work of attention, memory, thinking, perception, giving an even, joyful and calm emotional sensation. For this, there are also worked-out tricks (for example, the student is never pointed out to the mistake made: the teacher will simply repeat the said correctly, without error), but more often the teacher improvises based on the general principles of teaching. At the same time, he must also think about managing group communication: to involve one person in the general work, to push the other two in a general study, to make A a leader at least «for an hour», and B, who is accustomed to be a leader in his team and pretends to do so in the group, suppressing others, for some time to some extent off from communication.

Conditions of employment. The effectiveness of the teaching and educational process indirectly depends on the room in which the training takes place, the color solution of the interior, the equipment and decoration, the form and location of student and teacher workplaces, lighting, etc.

Thus, the requirements of modern society are such that it is necessary to master a foreign language in conditions of a rigid time limit with a considerable amount of material for mastering. To this end, intensive training methods have been developed. When organizing intensive training, a number of characteristics should be taken into account: the teacher's professionalism, clear goals and strict educational motivation, the optimal psychological climate in the group and its carefully selected composition, the special situation of the training room.