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Молодой учёный

Improving the quality of teaching foreign language lessons in a secondary school

5. Педагогика общеобразовательной школы
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Цай, Е. Н. Improving the quality of teaching foreign language lessons in a secondary school / Е. Н. Цай, Д. А. Сафаралиева. — Текст : непосредственный // Педагогическое мастерство : материалы XXXV Междунар. науч. конф. (г. Казань, октябрь 2022 г.). — Казань : Молодой ученый, 2022. — URL: https://moluch.ru/conf/ped/archive/461/17184/.


The modern society impose specific requirements on the education results, which significantly change the approaches to education and its goals.

The quality control of students' educational achievements, analysis and methodological support of the academic discipline, curriculum, is currently acquiring special relevance due to the transition of teaching from the traditional lesson system to the personality-oriented and competence system.

Nowadays personal development becomes the main goal of any educational institution. Modern education is moving from the content-disciplinary paradigm to competence, aimed to the development of such personal qualities as the ability and readiness to solve problems and tasks in the wide context of real life situations, adapting to a rapidly changing reality.

Today all educational institutions must solve the problem of personal development concerning modern society's issues and needs, striving for its’ transformation through self- realization. The most important task is to find and use such teaching methods that would provide the «launch» of the mechanisms of self-education, self-knowledge, and self-actualization of the personality.

This study aimed to identify those innovative learning methods that contribute to the formation of communicative competence, which is the goal of foreign language education, and to consider the system for assessing the foreign language lessons quality in general school for further development of the education quality taking into account modern world conditions.

Keywords: quality, management, teaching, foreign language, competence system, communication, development, modern education, curriculum.

In modern society, significant socio-political and economic transformations are taking place; significantly these transformations affect the educational sphere. These changes can be consider as a powerful impetus for educational requirements, because of which there is a need to change and revise existing standards. Today, such a transformation of the educational process in the course of the English language is of paramount importance, the course aims to provide schoolchildren not only with a certain level of English language knowledge, but also with communicative readiness. This communicative readiness determines skills for effective communication in the future, foreign language school course active assimilation, contributes to the successful post graduating professional activities implementation, and shifts the emphasis from quantitative indicators of the education to the qualitative characteristics [Altukhova, 2007].

The main goal of teaching a foreign language is the formation of communicative readiness, the ability and preparedness of schoolchildren to implement a foreign language while interpersonal and intercultural communication with a native speaker.

The relevance of this approach to learning is beyond of any doubt, since the 21st century can be characterized as a time of globalization and cultures interaction enhancement. Because of new relationships in different fields such as economy, policy, market and others, people need to have intercultural communication competence, which, according to Ter- Minasova's definition, means communication between people who are representing different cultures [Ter-Minasova, 2017].

In this regard, competent planning of a foreign language course, as well as education quality timely control, play an important role in modern teaching methods. The problem of students’ educational achievements quality control, analysis and control of academic discipline methodological support, curriculum, is currently acquiring special relevance in connection with the transition of modern teaching from a traditional lesson system to a personality-oriented and competency system.

In the modern world, in connection with the changing requirements for the quality of education, the level of mastering foreign languages, the system of quality control of education is of paramount importance. Quality control should mean a complex of characteristics of the educational process that determine the consistent and practically effective formation of competence and professional consciousness. Management of the quality of education, monitoring the educational achievements of schoolchildren in the learning process are important components of the system for assessing the quality of education.

The study is based on the assumption that the education quality assessment in foreign language lessons is an important stage in planning, improving the efficiency of the educational processes. To improve the quality of education, it is important to use modern information technologies, to promote the teachers self-development in an educational organization, to improve methodological work, to develop and implement author's models for assessing the education quality.

The purpose of the study is to consider the system for assessing the education quality in foreign language lessons in general school in order to create author's assessing education quality model for further development.

Literature review

The design, development and implementation of information technologies in various subject areas will ensure effective management of the educational process and effective assessment of the education quality. The use of ICT in the educational process is able to form a unified educational environment for working within the study group in the classroom, outside of lessons and outside of the educational institution.

Nowadays increasing opportunities for students' individual work, as well as the teachers joint work. ICTs can be actively used during regular classes, they are the basis of preparation for tests and exams. As a result of ICT usage, the arsenal of pedagogical tools for organizing students' independent work using new information technologies is significantly expanding [Belukhin, 2005].

Currently, information and computer technologies (ICT) represent a rather significant factor which contributing to the development and progress of civilization. Computer technologies are widely used in almost all spheres of human activity. ICT already has been recognized as a leading factor in the development of relationships in society, a means of intercultural communication. Being the basis of social relations, ICT forms a new sphere in the consciousness of the individual and society as a whole [Belyayev, 2012].

In the modern society modernization conditions, the information and educational environment is becoming increasingly important [Bityanova, 1997].

The modern information and educational environment (IEE) should ensure:

– achievement of the planned results in mastering the basic educational program;

– personal development of students, including the formation of social values system, key competencies that form the basis of lifelong education.

From the educational process point of view, the information and educational environment is an open pedagogical system, the main task of which is the formation of a creative personality, developed both intellectually and socially. The information and educational environment is inextricably linked with a person as a subject of education. In contrast to the concept of «information space», the concept of «environment» includes the subject, being the sphere of individual life activity, his development and education [Buryak, 2007].

What are the main components of the information and educational environment?

  1. These are components on paper: textbook, workbooks.
  2. These are components on digital media: an electronic appendix to the textbook, electronic visual aids, electronic simulators.
  3. This is an Internet environment: an Internet school, a multimedia collection, methodological support for teachers (programs, lesson constructors, and more).

Computers, electronic educational materials and technical Internet connection can improve the quality of education only with participation of teachers who has good new generation educational technologies acquisition and who methodically competently use the new information educational resource (IEE). Despite all these achievements, it is impossible to stand still without any progress, it is necessary to constantly look for and develop new ways of learning based on information and communication technologies (ICT) [Vorobyov, 2004].

Today, the educational process organizers, the scientific community, have a global goal, the creation of a unified information environment for an educational institution. To do this, it is necessary to cover a huge range of issues: what kind of information environment schools should have, what it should consist of, how to build it, and how to manage it [Zeer, 2003].

Organization of classes using ICT:

  1. Preparatory stage. It is aimed at the emotional and physical preparation of the student for the computer games and exercises useage. Gymnastics for the eyes, finger exercises are carried out to prepare the visual and motor analyzers for work. The student is getting introduced into a problematic situation.
  2. The main stage. The assigned training and educational tasks that meet the objectives of the lesson are solved.
  3. The final stage. It is necessary for joint and then independent evaluation of the student's activities results, and for the removal of emotional, visual and muscular tension.

The media library should be constantly replenished — a collection of educational and gaming resources borrowed from websites containing educational and correctional-developmental information, as well as created by preschool teachers: text, tabular, graphic, sound (melodies without words, songs, poems, sounds and onomatopoeia). While planning English classes, modern teachers include various multimedia tools. The possibilities of the Internet, e-mail for teaching reading, writing, business communication and correspondence skills, microcomputers, translation organizers, cloud databases, translation programs and auxiliary tools, electronic dictionaries and glossaries are widely used.

Thus, compliance, the use of information and computer technologies in foreign language lessons at school will improve the quality and effectiveness of education, and also will contribute to the regular monitoring and evaluation of the education quality [Kadyrova, 2015].

Teaching a foreign language can be effective and high quality, under the following conditions:

– training by highly qualified teachers;

– the priority in teaching effective methods of control and ITO;

– studying and taking into account the characteristics of the psyche of students;

– motivation of students to study the discipline;

– developing self-control skills

– teachers in classes explorations.

Education is the most important sphere of social life, which forms the intellectual, cultural, spiritual states of society. The education quality is the demand for the acquired knowledge in the specific conditions of its application for achieving a specific goal and improving the quality of life [Ilyenkova, 2006].

Analysis of scientific and methodological literature, based on regulatory documents and programs related to the quality of modern education in a general education school indicates that a key factor influencing on the quality of education, is the teaching quality of the main participants in the educational process — the teacher and the student [Lewis, 2002].

The problem of teaching quality, in particular, a foreign language, is one of the most important tasks of education at the present stage due to the changes in the legislation in the field of education and the transition of educational institutions to trilingualism, which, on the one hand, were caused by the desire of Kazakhstan as a country participating in the Bologna process to enter a single educational space, and on the other hand, by the desire to harmonize goals and educational outcomes with the real needs of students, university graduates, employers and society [Juravlyov,2015].

The quality of education depends primarily on the quality of the teacher's training.

The standard of general education includes the following requirements for a school graduate in the subject «Foreign language» at a basic level:

– the graduate must know / understand foreign vocabulary;

– extended grammar and regional geographic information obtained from authentic sources;

– he must be able to communicate using a variety of communication styles and owning the rules of speech etiquette;

– understand foreign language and express his point of view assessing the situation critically;

– read authentic texts in different styles, using the main types of reading, depending on the communicative task;

– has writing skills, and to use the acquired knowledge and skills in practice and everyday life.

However, as it is known, the listed knowledge and skills are not developing by most of schools in the enough level.

The famous American scientist E. Deming paid attention to the significance of control actions and showed that less than 15 % of deviations in the quality of training depend on the direct performers, and more than 85 % of defects are determined by the deficiencies of management (Ismailov, 2008).

Control is performed by several main interrelated didactic functions:

– diagnostic — identifying the state of knowledge and skills of students, fixing and localizing knowledge gaps;

– evaluative — determining the level of training;

– training — improving the tested knowledge through systematization, generalization, correction;

– organizing — the organization and management of the learning process based on the accepted forms and methods of control;

– upbringing — the formation of students' responsibility for their work results, stimulation of learning.

Control will be effective and will fulfill its functions only if it was organized and conducted taking into account the specifics of the academic subject and when the correct definition of the control object, which in this case is mastering language skills in various types of activities.

Methodology

Research results based on the analysis of observation, scientific literature and conversations with research participants. The study used following research methods: analytical (studying scientific sources); method of comparative analysis (processing the researching materials); comparison and generalization methods (summing up and determining the study results).

Results and discussion

The quality of educational activities directly depends on the teaching staff. For a successful and regular improvement of the quality of education, it is important to improve the qualifications of teachers. One of the main forms of advanced training for teachers is methodical work.

An important link in the methodological work of the teacher is the methodological support that is the management of the teacher's self-development process in the educational system. The thesis presents the author's model for assessing the quality of foreign language lesson, based on the organization of methodological support for the teacher and the phased management of the teacher's self-development process.

The stages of managing the process of teacher's self-development in an educational organization, involving a certain activity content and a new pedagogical professionalism, are presented in Table 1.

The quality of educational activities directly depends on the teaching staff. For a successful and regular improvement of the quality of education, it is important to improve the qualifications of teachers. One of the main forms of advanced training for teachers is methodical work.

An important link in the methodological work of the teacher is the methodological support, that is the management of the teacher's self-development process in the educational system. The thesis presents the author's model for assessing the quality of foreign language lesson, based on the organization of methodological support for the teacher and the phased management of the teacher's self-development process.

Table 1

Management stage

Content of the activity

Planning and preparation

Identification professional groups and individual teachers needs in supporting. Development of the maintenance concept. Search for possible sources of support (qualified specialists, basic schools, etc.). Development of a methodological materials package for supporting. Determination criteria for evaluating the maintenance effectiveness.

Management itself

Actualization of internal forces and reserve capabilities of teachers and professional groups. Consulting on specific problems and projects. Informational and analytical support, provision of methodological developments. Assistance in finding optimal technologies and techniques. Organization of information exchange and contacts between teachers. Increasing the level of adaptation to professionally stressful situations (innovative activity, experimental work, etc.). Diagnosis and resolution of professional conflicts.

Reflection and analysis of the results of maintenance

Informal monitoring and tracking of changes in the activities of teachers (professional groups). Correction of innovative behavior models. Final analysis and evaluation of the effectiveness of the maintenance process.

Using the tracking results

The emergence of new sources for innovation activities. Support and development of professional initiatives and pilot projects. Development of recommendations on the organization and innovative activities teachers support.

Also, it should be considered that schoolchildren, especially middle school students, are adolescents and are considered the most vulnerable category. School years fall into adolescence. This period is characterized as a transition period, and is considered a crisis period for a person, which is associated with physiological and psychological characteristics. The modern approach to teaching implies the implementation of the basic principles of learning a foreign language. At the same time, the content of the course should be «accessible», it is necessary to take into account the age and individual characteristics of students in the learning process, adhere to the sequence and systematic in training. It is also important to use non-traditional forms of organizing classes.

In this case, the following forms are traditionally used: lesson-lecture, lesson-journey, lesson-game, lesson-competition, quiz lesson, video lesson, lesson-conference, lesson-brain-ring, lesson-drawing, a heart-to-heart lesson, lesson-protection of the project, lesson-test, lesson-excursion.

One of the methods of work in foreign language lessons is the introduction of historical material into the learning process, solving old problems, providing information about the historical development of a foreign language, the culture of the language country being studied. The importance of a historical approach to the study of a foreign language lies in the fact that a person who has mastered history and has managed to understand its connection with all sciences, then skillfully works with any amount of information, knows how to receive, process, analyze, and verify it.

Fig. 1. Foreign language lesson quality assessment model

In the process of evaluating interaction when students were working in groups, was paid attention to the following ways of exchanging information:

– monologue skills, which consist in compiling a monologue statement within the framework of a communicative task, expressing one's opinion, ideas, thoughts;

– dialogic skills — the perception of information in the course of communication, the construction of questions, the analysis of information, the clarification of details, the expression of one's opinion, the ability to enter into a discussion, etc.

Was assessed the students' ability to find, analyze and select the necessary information, as well as the ability to transform, store and transmit the information received. For example, in a dialogue, the task of students was to share their opinion, to find out the opinion of interlocutors on a given problem, and in a monologue, to convey previously received and processed information.

In addition, the level of language proficiency was assessed, which includes lexico-grammatical and phonetic skills. The maximum number of points for work in the lesson was 10, after which the students were graded according to a five-point system:

– 9–10–5 points (excellent level);

– 7–8–4 points (good level);

– 4–6–3 points (sufficient level);

– 1–3–2 points (insufficient level).

The figure below shows, in percentage terms, a comparison of the language competency levels in the control and experimental groups before the experimental training.

Thus, we can conclude that the level of language competence among students is at a sufficient level in the experimental group and at a good level in the control group. Green colour results of control group, blue ones are results of experimental group while pre-experimental stage.

During the observation was noted that the students statements volume increased from 3–5 sentences to 7–10, the amount of time required to complete the task decreased, the interest of students and the desire to participate in communication increased, students willingly asked questions and answered them to their classmates, without any difficulties entered into a dialogue with the teacher. In addition, it became easier for students to build their statements, because they began think less about grammatical correctness and lexical appropriateness due to the fact that the teacher is seen as an co-ally rather than as an evaluator.

The data obtained indicates that the results of the control group have not changed, while in the experimental group there is a clear progress. Thus, 36 % of students are at an excellent level, 50 % are at a good level, and 14 % are at a sufficient level. Note that there is not a single student left with an insufficient level. In Figure 2, presented results after experiential learning.

So, the data obtained indicate a significant improvement in the level of interaction among the students of the experimental group, as well as an improvement in their grammatical and lexical skills. Over time, students have ceased to be afraid to communicate in English.

Conclusion

Thus, the results obtained testify to the effectiveness of organizing English classes after the implementation author's model for assessing the quality of foreign language lesson. This form contributes to the formation of communicative readiness, with the help of which the students learn to understand speech, develop grammatical and communication skills. Control and assessment of knowledge is necessary at all stages of learning.

The hypothesis, according to which the assessment of the quality of foreign language lessons is an important stage in planning and improving the efficiency of educational processes, was confirmed.

Design, development and implementation of information technologies will ensure effective management of the educational process, and effective assessment of the education quality. The ICT usage in the educational process can form a unified educational environment for working within the study group in the classroom, outside the classroom and outside the educational institution. So opportunities for the schoolchildren individual work, as well as the joint work of teachers, can be increased. ICT can be actively used during regular classes, they are the basis for preparing for tests and exams.

For successful and regular improvement of the education quality it is important to improve the qualifications of teachers. One of the main forms of advanced training for teachers is methodical work.

An important link in the methodological work of the teacher is methodological support, which, in essence, is the management of the process of self-development of the teacher in the educational system. The paper presents the author's model for assessing the quality of education, based on the organization of methodological support for the teacher and the phased management of the teacher's self-development process.

For the ongoing work results tracking, were identified and generalized characteristics of the education quality in English lessons. The teaching effectiveness, assessed by the communicative readiness of schoolchildren (that is, the readiness of schoolchildren for interpersonal communication with native speakers, reading original literature), tends to increase with the foreign language lesson quality assessment model usage.

References:

  1. Altukhova, M. (2007). Activity technology in a foreign language lesson. Traditions and innovations in the methodology of teaching a foreign language. St. Petersburg: KARO, 153–161.
  2. Belyaev, B. (2012). Essays on the psychology of teaching foreign languages. M.: Enlightenment, 27 (2), 229–256.
  3. Borich, G. (2000). Effective Teaching Methods. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc. Print, 4 (1).
  4. Deming, E., (2019). Out of the Crisis: A New Paradigm for Managing People, Systems and Processes. Moscow: Alpina Publisher, 370.
  5. Ilyenkova, S. (2016). Indicators of the education quality. Education Journal, 92 (1), 255–262.
  6. Ismailov, K. (2008). Practical recommendations for organizing control of students' knowledge in the «Foreign language» discipline. Yoshkar-Ola, 2 (8), 17–25.
  7. Juravlyov, D. (2015). Kazakhstan's «trilingualism» — a unique formula of language policy. https://online.zakon.kz/Document/?doc_id=31054298#pos=3;-80
  8. Lewis, L. (2002). Monitoring the quality of student training. Language Teaching, 40(1), 60–71.
  9. Pasvan, A., & Dixit, K.K. (2011). Continuous Professional Development: Annotated bibliography. New Delhi: British Council.
  10. Ter-Minasova, S. (2014). Language and intercultural communication. Moscow: Moscow University Press, 165–237.
  11. Zimnyaya, I. (2004). Competence approach in education (methodological and theoretical aspect). Problems of education quality.
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Ключевые слова
quality
management
teaching
foreign language
competence system
communication
development
modern education
curriculum

Молодой учёный