English is known not only as an international, but as a global language as well [1]. Nowadays every sixth person in the world speaks English, and this figure is constantly growing. No other language in terms of speed and scale of distribution can be compared with it. 80 % of English in the world is not used by native speakers.
It is known that even with a good comprehension of a foreign language, people often make mistakes in speaking, because of interlingua and intercultural interference — «the influence of the mother tongue and culture features systems on foreign language» [2]. Thus, there are deviations from the norm of pronunciation of sounds and words in English under the influence of the native language, which makes understanding of English speech more difficult.
Under the influence of interference there are local varieties of English, known as, for example, Pidgin English — English, spoken in Asian countries, Australian English, American, etc. In English-speaking countries there are many dialects, for example, in the UK you can hear Scottish, Irish and Welsh dialects, because in addition to the indigenous people there live a large number of immigrants whose English language differs from the standardized English.
David Kristal, one of the leading linguists, the author of the encyclopedia of English linguistics, says [3] that «… if the goal of teaching English is to train people, which in the future can interact with confidence in any part of the world with the help of English, then it should be taught as a global one». This means, that it is necessary to teach listening to speech with accents, reading texts from various sources written not only by native speakers. And the Internet is an important source of such texts. David Crystal says that students, getting outside the school, are sure of the existence of only one variant of English, which they taught at school.
However, it is worthwhile for a person to go out into the street, let’s say in London, and he will listen to hundreds of different accents and dialects that differ significantly from Standard English. Learning to understand oral speech with emphasis will maximally prepare the student for various standard and non-standard situations. D. Kristal believes that it is necessary to teach global English at the level of perception and at the level of production — to the standard English one.
In the first course of ESP students, where an educational process was arranged according their level of understanding the English speech with an accent. Students were performed assignments based on a video from the Internet, where the speech was sounded with a Canadian accent. While performing the tasks, they had difficulty in understanding speech, in particular because of different speech tempo, extraneous sounds (music, noise), where pronunciation was different from what they are accustomed to hear the use of spoken English in speech, as well as fuzzy pronunciation of words and sounds with frequent changes of speakers. After listening for the first time without video accompaniment, the students could not properly understand the general meaning of what was said, while after performing tasks based on audio recordings with the British version of English, students practically did not have any difficulties and they made fewer mistakes. However, during a second viewing, the visual accompaniment helped them to guess what was being said.
Thus, the problem was identified — the students do not understand the speech in English with an accent as good as the standard pronunciation, which in the future may be a problem while communicating with foreigners for whom English is not the mother tongue.
Hypothesis: the use of video support will allow students to better understand the situation of communication and to perceive by audio a speech with an accent.
Using video support while listening allows learners better understanding the situation of communication. It is justified psychologically, since it is through the organs of sight and hearing that a person receives the main information about the world around.
For instance, Youtube source can also be chosen as a video material provider. Here the materials are authentic, not intended for educating. An obligatory condition for its selection was the presence of an accent of the speakers. The materials corresponded to the subject of the lesson and the age characteristics of the students.
In order to check the effect, within 4 weeks, students were asked to complete 4 tasks based on video recordings. While performing the task based on the video, the speech was presented in Canadian accent. The students completed 47 % of the tasks. One of the most difficult was the question of «How many people claimed the same information?» Only one student answered correctly to this question, while the other students could not understand the details in the speech of each speaker. However, they singled out the main idea. In the following video, an American version of English was presented. After the first viewing, the students, unfortunately, could not distinguish the main idea.
To sum up, in teaching foreign language, we should pay more attention not only to the classic form of a language, but to the authenticity of material, which would be reliable and valid, more realistic and effective way of second language acquisition.
References:
- Английский и статистика. URL: http://english-info.ucoz.ru/news/anglijskijistatistika/2011–02–13–67.
- URL: http://ru.wikipedia.org.
- Сrystal D. Should English be taught as a «global» language? URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLYk4vKBdUo
