The article is devoted to the problem of the native language influence on foreign language teaching. Methodological principles of bilingual education are briefly considered. There are listed competencies that are formed in the results of bilingual education. A number of problems that teachers may face in the process of teaching a foreign language is presented.
Key words : foreign language, bilingual students, teaching, native language, bilingualism
In the modern world, the need for learning foreign languages is increasing. There are about 2,800 languages in the world. They are very different, but with all the huge differences between languages, they all have a lot in common in the most important and essential (and sometimes in details), they all make up a single class of phenomena. Every language uses sounds uttered by a person to express thoughts. If a person uses several languages in his speech activity, then they are all in contact. The situation of language contact leads to the emergence of bilingualism (multilingualism), that is, to the possession of two (or more) languages and their alternate use depending on the conditions of speech communication. Accordingly, persons who alternately use two languages are considered bilingual speakers, bilingual individuals or bilinguals. At the same time, bilingualism or bilingualism is considered in the literature as a continuum extending from a very basic knowledge of the contact language to full and fluent command of it.
Since the beginning of the 90s of the 20th century, bilingual education has been the leading direction of educational policy in many countries of the world. It is considered as very promising, since it provides students with wide access to information in various subject areas, contributes to the improvement of general language and subject training, the formation of language culture as a whole, as well as cognitive motivation.
The term «bilingual education» implies teaching a subject and mastering students' subject knowledge in a certain area based on the interrelated use of two languages (native and non-native). According to the National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE), in USA, — bilingual education has numerous forms. «A broad interpretation of this concept means the use of two languages (by teachers or students, or both) for various pedagogical or social purposes. This interpretation implies approaches in which the national languages of students studying English are used as the language of instruction» [8].
Bilingual education is understood as the interrelated activity of a teacher and students in the process of teaching individual subjects or subject areas by means of native and foreign languages, as well as providing a high level of foreign language proficiency, mastering the content of subject-professional, intercultural and linguistic competencies [7].
Bilingual education causes a lot of discussion, despite the fact that students studying in bilingual programs demonstrate significant academic success, sometimes surpassing the achievements of peers studying in monolingual programs.
According to L. L. Salekhova, as a result of bilingual education, there is a synthesis of competencies: communicative (including components such as linguistic, sociolinguistic, discursive, strategic, socio-cultural and social competencies) and subject (showing the uniqueness of academic disciplines studied bilingually and determined by the level of mastering the subject content embedded in them) [2]. With bilingual education, it becomes possible to compare, analyze, and compare the same subject content in different educational cultures. Thus, the possibility of successful integration and adaptation to the conditions of the world educational space is realized [6].
There are many essential didactic and methodological problems of bilingual education; what place a foreign language should occupy in the educational process, that is, the ratio of native and foreign languages in bilingual education, the time of introduction of a second language into teaching and so on.
Vladimirova I. G. believes that the use of the native language in the process of bilingual education is useful, especially when forming terminology in two languages that make up the vocabulary in the vocational education, as well as when conducting comparative analysis and in certain educational situations characterized by fear of spontaneous speaking, when language competence in a foreign language is not yet sufficiently formed [8].
Bilingual students are of exceptional interest in teaching a non-native language — those residents of our country for whom Russian is a second native language.
It is important to realize what such bilingualism leads to when teaching a non-native language, whether the solution of the problem is simplified or not». Chain may contain various combinations of three elements: a) «native language + Russian language» are opposed to «foreign language»; b) «native language» is opposed to two non-native — «Russian language + foreign language»; c) all three languages act as independent systems.
The most important methodological principle of bilingual instruction is taking into account the student`s native language. Probably, there was no other principle to which the attitude would change so inconsistently: now it became the only and leading one, as, for example, during the spread of the grammatical-translation method, then it was partially or completely excluded, as, for example, with direct, audiovisual methods and their subsequent modifications. Currently, the principle of taking into account the native language is not controversial, it is recognized by many scholars.
For example, L. V. Shcherba insisted on the creation of comparative grammars for teaching purposes. He considered them effective, because they make teachers to understand better the nature of the phenomena that make up the linguistic content of learning, to identify phonetic, grammatical and lexical difficulties that students may encounter [3].
There are a number of problems that the teacher faces in teaching foreign or the second languages.
- Ethnic diversity within one academic group, representatives of different linguistic cultures are gathered, whose initial level of English proficiency and learning abilities are different.
- Students motivation in learning a foreign language.
- Students Russian language proficiency are very different, this complicates the educational process as a whole and the implementation of such activities as translation from a foreign language into Russian, the assimilation of grammatical material.
- Teacher's lack of knowledge of the student`s native language, what leads to difficulties in presenting materials.
- The influence of student`s native language on a foreign language acquisition. For example, in the Turkic languages there is no gender category for pronouns, which makes it difficult to explain and use the pronouns “She” and “He” in English. During the learning process, difficulties arise in mastering the pronunciation side of speech — a number of sounds of the English language are replaced by more convenient native sounds, some sound combinations (diphthongs) are «washed out» from speech, because they are difficult to reproduce. It is also difficult to stress and observe the intonation pattern in a sentence, which is explained by the peculiarity of the Turkic languages, where in most words 274 (99.9 %) stress falls on the last syllable, and its fixed nature eliminates the need to shade the stressed sound with some additional means (for example, diphthongization). Differences in the intonation patterns of languages explain the difficulties in using ascending and descending intonations when posing interrogative sentences. Bilingual students experience the impact of their native language. In addition, the thought of the utterance of bilingual students is first formed in their native language, and then translated into the language being studied. As a result, indifferent errors are allowed. For example, students have significant difficulties in mastering the modern forms of the English verb based on the Russian language. This is due to the fact that in Russian there is no such detail of the temporal meanings of the verb, which is observed in English [4].
Russian is not well spoken by some students who have graduated from rural national schools to understand all the complexities of expressions of temporal relations in English, or in Russian.
The most difficult of the skills formed within the framework of communicative competence are the ability to perceive a text as a product of speech activity and create their own statements in the process of communication. However, it is also well known that the level of speech training of graduates of national schools, in terms of monologue speech proficiency is insufficient, which explains the problem of the development of written monologue speech among bilingual students studying English with a reliance on Russian. When reading texts in English, students perceive sounds, letters and words, based on their experience of perception and reproduction, bring the sounds of the English language to the patterns of sounds of their native language, likening familiar letters and sounds [1]. Bilingual students are not sufficiently prepared to perform various forms of independent learning: they do not have sufficient skills to prepare for two or more sources, to compare, highlight the main thing, generalize, clearly formulate their ideas, which leads to the loss of a significant part of information and a decrease in the effectiveness of academic work.
Thus, in order to carry out effective work and achieve results of the English language learning process in a group with bilingual students, the teacher should take into account all these features.
References:
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- Salekhova, L. L. Theory and practice of the development of schools with bilingual education / L. L. Salekhova. — Kazan: Publishing house of Kazan. un-ta, 2004– — 204 p.
- Shcherba, L. V. Teaching a foreign language in secondary school. / L. V. Shcherba. — M.: Enlightenment, 1973. — 220 p.
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