HOW TO COMBINE DIFFERENT TECHNIQUES IN TEACHING ENGLISH: COMMUNICATIVE AND LEXICAL APPROACHES

Rozhkova Natalia (Kropyvnytskyi, Ukraine)

There is a huge number of courses and textbooks based on the communicative approach of teaching a foreign language, and it is considered to be the most correct and progressive. But the further we think of it and use it, the more ambiguous attitude to this method we have, and the more questions it raises: what are its advantages and disadvantages, why it has become so popular among students and teachers? Are there any ways of combining different methods to make the process of learning English less difficult but more effective? Thus modern teachers are looking for the most efficient and progressive ways of teaching a foreign language.

Key-words: communicative approach, interpersonal communication, technique, vocabulary, integrated approach, lexical chunks, lexical approach, Principled Eclecticism.

Defining of the problem . The communicative approach is mistakenly reduced solely to speaking, because it is far not everything involved in the interpersonal communication in real life, and it is not everything the method itself has to offer either. Communication is not limited only with speaking, but it also presupposes listening, even in the form of the flight announcement or typical seller's question in the supermarket. In this case we accept and interpret the sound message, but do not send it, as in the case of speaking. When we write a letter, draw up our CV or just talk in short messages, we communicate in writing rather than orally. Reading the responses to our emails or a newspaper article, we continue to communicate in the form of reading. Thus, communicative approach in teaching is the development of communicative skills: as conventionally active (speaking, writing) and passive (listening, reading). Therefore, the purpose of a student "I want to be able to speak" is good and commendable by itself, but it requires some adjustment and correct reallocation of the accents. On the other hand, the perception of the communicative approach as such, which teaches only speaking is unfounded and therefore is inherently wrong. Otherwise, it is not communication, but a monologue without feedback.

The main material of the article. You can wonder where the catch lies when using this approach. After the initial euphoria of the communicative approach some may get frustrated. Students begin to communicate in a foreign language quite smartly and fearlessly, which is very laudable and has a huge advantage of this technique, but they make such a huge number of mistakes in their speech that it is merely impossible to listen to it. That is, fluency, as the purpose of the training can be gained easier and faster than its quality. To practice grammar, to develop and eliminate mistakes or at least neutralize them is sorely lacking time because a teacher needs to meet the deadlines set by the program. As a result, we have got a specialist with semi-knowledge and semi-ability to communicate in a foreign language, who is usually tied tightly to specific topics and is able to talk a bit about itself, its work and apartment, hobby and leisure, family and friends. At first glance, it seems that the usual circle of communication revolves around the social kind of topics like the above mentioned, but if to take into account professional or scientific work involving the use of specifically focused terminology, writing research papers, presentation at conferences, the ability to conduct a scientific discussion, it becomes obvious that learning a language requires deepening and some improvements in terms of vocabulary and grammatical structures.

From the point of view of psychology the communicative approach may not always fit all students without exception by virtue of individual peculiarities of perception and absorption of information. For example, the communicative approach in teaching a group can turn into a nightmare for an introvert. Such a person will feel very uncomfortable in an unfamiliar environment, surrounded by strangers with whom it is necessary to communicate all the time.

Each of the methods, and there are a lot of them for today (The Silent Way, Total Physical Response (TPR), Task-based learning (TBL), Suggestopedia, the Lexical Approach and others), has its own peculiar training strategy and without doubt you can borrow something useful for effective teaching from each technique.

The main advantage of the communicative approach is that it helps to remove the fear of communication, to withdraw the so-called language barrier. Students learn to use the living language and orientate themselves in different communicative situations. The presence of mistakes here is an inevitably, but correcting of the situation in a qualitative aspect becomes a teacher's challenge. In this case an integrated approach, encompassing all levels of communication, is needed that will help combine the communicative approach with other working methods.

One of the issues that arises when studying the tense forms, is working with the Past Simple. The question arises: can one get rid of the mistakes without lengthy explanations of the rules and learning the table of the irregular verbs by heart? And how to increase the vocabulary and improve fluency? Here the lexical approach becomes an indispensable assistant in language learning. It helps move from studying of separate words to phrases.

The way this method works can be shown on the example of the work with a text. Typically, when working with a text, students can be given the tasks like "Write out regular and irregular verbs in the past tense in two columns from the text" or "Write the given verbs in the past tense". Then there perhaps can be an exercise on the use of the verbs in sentences, but due attention to phrases is not given. In other words, vocabulary expanding with this approach seems to be almost impossible. In order to achieve two objectives at once, entire phrases should be written out of the text and then they should be worked at. For example, if there are verbs like left, found, met, knew, spoke in the text, they should be written out in phrases: felt embarrassed, a man that I knew, came to my place, spoke English, got back home. You can then create new phrases, they may be the most common: to the party, on the phone, in a café, her very well, him yesterday, the car in front of the house, my keys are in the bag. We get new phrases in the form they will be used in the speech:

Now these phrases can be used in "Crammed" or "Snowball" stories: I couldn't sleep last night, so I went out for a coffee. When I got to the coffee shop, I realized that I had left my wallet at home. I felt really embarrassed and I didn't know what to do, so. ..

Mastering and use of collocations, lexical chunks greatly improves fluency and allows to recharge one's vocabulary quickly. Lexical approach gives principle and its understanding helps to create new phrases, just replacing some words in the matrix: I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to say. I didn't know where to go. I left my car in front of the house. I left my wallet at home. I left my phone in the office.

The lexical approach and mastering of lexical chunks almost exempts explaining grammar. And with the naked eye you can see that any phrases represent the half grammar: we train phrases with irregular verbs in the Simple Past at once.

Such phrases (with infinitive) are also memorized immediately and easily without much explanation, when you need the infinitive form and when it is not needed. And then, at higher levels, when we come to the difference between the infinitive and gerund, all this is already well known. And it is not in theory, but in practice, intuitively. The correct prepositions are also memorized without much theoretical calculations: in front of the house, at home, in the office.

Conclusions and recommendations for further research. Thus, we see many advantages of lexical approach in the English language teaching. Naturally, this is only a small part of its capacity, but even when using single tasks, constructed in the spirit of this method, positive results in education can be achieved. In this case, one should not forget that the increase of the level of communicative competence of students largely depends on their vocabulary and ability to use it in conversation. Therefore, the skillful use of different techniques (Principled Eclecticism) will provide an opportunity to achieve this goal. However, the task of its implementation will be entrusted entirely to the teacher because the use of several methods at the same time is quite a laborious process that requires a creative approach. We focus on such development for the English language training of the students of non-lingual faculties.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Canale, M.; Swain, M. (1980). "Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing"

2. Hattum, Ton van (2006), The Communicative Approach Rethought

3. Lewis, Michael, ed. (1997). Implementing the Lexical Approach, Language Teaching Publications, Hove, England.

4. Willis, J. & Willis, D. (Eds.) (1996). Challenge and Change in Language Teaching. Oxford: Heinemann

INFORMATION ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rozhkova Natalia – Ph.D., senior lecturer, Department of Linguadidactics and Foreign Languages, Kirovograd V. Vynnychenko State Pedagogical University.

Scientific interests: methodology of teaching English at non-lingual faculties.