Information and communication technologies as an important aid in training foreign languages

Abstract

Information and communication technologies are an unlimited basis for creating an informational and objective environment for the education and self - education of people, the satisfaction of their professional and personal interests and needs. But only one availability of access to Internet resources will not guarantee fast and Iiigh - quality language education. That is why at the present stage of teaching foreign languages with using the latest Internet technologies, there is an urgent need to develop new training Internet resources aimed at integrated formation and development progress of learning FL. ICTs contain a huge educational potential and seem to be an additional opportunity to create an informational and learning environment. They help to increase the level of sociocultural competence in teaching FL, creating unique conditions for learning cultural diversity of the countries of the studied language. The development of online training resources allows to have a completely different look at the educational resources of the Internet and to perceive diem as alternative. Educational Internet resources can also be directed to the development of foreign language Communicadve competences of all types of language activities. The development of skills achieved with the help of educational Internet resources while teaching FL meets the requirements of modem Iiigher education for teaching foreign languages (basic FL and professional - oriented FL). Thus, the use of Internet resources in the process of learning foreign language (together with traditional textbooks) will contribute to the achievement of the main goals of learning oforeign languages.

Аннотация

Информационно - коммуникационные технологии являются неограниченной базой создания информационно - предметной среды для образования и самообразования людей, удовлетворения их профессиональных и личных интересов и потребностей. Но лишь одно наличие доступа к Интернет - ресурсам не будет гарантом быстрого и качественного языкового образования. Именно поэтому на современном этапе обучения иностранным языкам, когда используются новейшие Интернет - технологии, возникает острая необходимость в разработке новых учебных Интернет - ресурсов, направленных на комплексное формирование и развитие. ИКТ содержат огромный образовательный потенциал и являются дополнительной возможностью создания информационно - предметной среды обучения. Они способствуют повышению уровня социокультурной компетенции при обучении ИЯ, создавая уникальные условия для ознакомления с культурным разнообразием стран изучаемого языка. Разработка учебных Интернет - ресурсов позволяет совершенно иначе посмотреть на образовательные ресурсы Интернета и воспринимать их как альтернативные. Учебные Интернет - ресурсы также могут быть направлены на развитие иноязычной коммуникативной компетенций всех видов речевой деятельности. Развитие умений, которые достигаются при помощи образовательных Интернет - ресурсов при обучении ИЯ, соответствует требованиям современной высшей школы к обучению иностранным языкам (базовый ИЯ и профессионально-ориентированный ИЯ). Таким образом, применение Интернет - ресурсов в процессе обучения иностранному' языку (наравне с печатными изданиями) будет способствовать достижению основных целей обучения ИЯ.

Ключевые слова: информационно - коммуникационные технологии, электронная почта, чат, форум, интернет - ресурсы, веб - конференции, хотлист (hotlist). трежа хант (treasure hunt), сабджект сэмпла (subject sampler), мультимедиа скрэпбук (multimedia scrapbook), вебквест (yvebquest). создание информационно - предметной среды обучения.

Introduction

Physical borders become less and less relevant in a world where human connectivity occurs instantaneously through the Internet and social media instead of borders of cultural differences and similarities and so on. In the entertainment business, film and television projects are increasingly the result of international collaborative efforts in content creation, financing, and physical production; therefore, transcultural collaboration is a vital skill for the professional development of students. Creativity in student partnerships was enhanced through the implementation of an active learning paradigm in our globally networked learning environment [1, 185].

The advantage of ICT in training foreign languages with its positive impact of various forms of synchronous and asynchronous Internet communication (e-mail, a chat, forums web conferences, etc.) presents the opportunity to form students’ foreign - language communicative competence. The Internet resources give invaluable base of information environment for education and self - education corresponding different professional and personal interests and requirements. However the Internet resources access itself does not promote training foreign languages yet. To satisfy these purposes ICT needs special development of modern educational Internet resources directed to formation:

1. traditional aspects of foreign - language communicative competence

(grammatical, sociocultural, compensatory, educational and informative);

1. communicative and cognitive abilities of searching and selecting, making

generalization, classification, the analysis and synthesis of the obtained information;

1. communicative abilities to represent and discuss the results of work with the Internet resources;
2. abilities to use the Internet resources for acquaintance of various countries’ cultural and historical heritage and their people and also to present the native culture, country, city, etc.;
3. abilities to use the Internet resources for information interests in various spheres.

The internet - based technology for training foreign languages is a set of forms, methods and ways of training a foreign language with use of the Internet resources including two main components: forms of telecommunication and information resources.

The most common forms of telecommunication (communications by means of Internet technologies) are:

• e - mail;
• chat;
• forum;
• various services of instant messages exchange in the Internet (such as ICQ, etc.);
• video, web conferences, etc.

Being created for communication between people in the Internet ICT are actively used for training foreign languages. Now ICT are familiar to the majority of both students and teachers.

Internet resources contain various textual, audio and visual information in different languages as well as different instructions how to treat the Internet resources. Unlike telecommunication, e - learning is created only for training various subjects, including foreign languages.

Educational Internet resources

There are five types of educational Internet resources:

• hotlist;
• treasure hunt;
• subject sampler;
• multimedia scrapbook;
• web quest.

The hotlist represents the list the Internet websites of textual information on the studied subject. It is rather simple to create it and it can be useful in the course of training. The Hotlist does not demand time for search of necessary information. Everything that is necessary - it is only to put down a keyword into the search engine and you receive the necessary hotlist.

Multimedia scrapbook (draft copy) - represents a peculiar collection of multimedia resources. Unlike the hotlist, scrapbook gives references not only to the text websites, but also to photos, audio files and video clips, graphic information and animated virtual tours being very popular today. All files of a scrapbook can be easily downloaded and used as information and illustrative material for studying a certain subject.

Treasure hunt reminds a hotlist and scrapbook in many respects. It contains references to various websites on the studied subject. The only difference is that each of references contains questions on site content. By means of these questions it is possible to direct search activity of students. At the end of a Treasure hunt the teacher can ask one more general question to check comprehension of actual material. Students’ detailed answer should generalize all answers to the previous questions.

Subject sampler is at the following level of complexity in comparison to a treasure hunt. References to text and multimedia materials of the Internet (photos, audio - and video clips, graphic information) are presented here. After studying all aspects of a topic students should answer the given questions. However unlike a treasure hunt by means of which actual material is studied, subject sampler is directed to discussion of social importance topics. Students’ task is not just get acquainted with the information only, but they are to express their own opinion on the studied debatable topics.

Multimedia scrapbook (draft copy) - represents a peculiar collection of multimedia resources. Unlike the hotlist, scrapbook gives references not only to the text websites, but also to photos, audiofdes and video clips, graphic information and animated virtual tours being very popular today. All files of a scrapbook can be easily downloaded and used as information and illustrative material for studying a certain subject. Sometimes during the group work it is necessary to subdivide one topic into several aspects. After discussion of every certain aspect in smaller groups it is important to present students’ opinions to the whole audience.

Web quest (Online project) is the most complicated kind of work with educational Internet resources. The web quest is a scenario of the project - based students’ activities at any topic by means of the Internet resources. It includes all four components mentioned above (hotlist, treasure hunt, subject sampler, multimedia scrapbook) and includes the participation of all students in class. Such scenario of project - based activities on the base of the Internet resources can have the following structure. At first everybody should get acquainted with general information on the studied subject to plunge into the problem of the developed project. Then students are divided into smaller groups to gets one certain aspect of the subject for studying and discussion. At the same time it is necessary to choose Internet resources for each group according to the studied aspect. After studying, discussing and understanding specific problem in each smaller group it is necessary to rearrange class in order to form groups with one representative from each primary group. So it will allow discussing all aspects of the studied problem. In the course of discussions students have to express their own opinions, make conclusions, to predict the further sequence of events. The general goal of web quest is to answer one significant question of debatable character through studying Internet information and its discussion. Online exchange projects of this nature can contribute to the development of learner autonomy, linguistic accuracy, intercultural awareness, intercultural skills and electronic literacies.

Therefore having gradually increasing complexity these five kinds of work with educational Internet resources allow us to solve a wide range of different tasks. The hotlist and multimedia scrapbook are aimed at finding, selection and classification information. A treasure hunt, subject sampler and web quest contain certain elements of problem - based learning.

It is possible to use for these purposes ready - made educational Internet resources on the studied subjects or to create our own ones. There is rather big bank of English - speaking educational Internet resources on the website www.kn.att.com. We need only to put down a keyword (the studied subject) into the search engine and to choose what is required: a hotlist or web quest. It is possible to use a special program available in the Internet or to create educational Internet resources in the text editor without any special program.

Research methods

So, in the course of this article, we have considered one of the most effective methods - the use of ICT in teaching foreign languages. These technologies, combined with traditional ones or autonomously allow to achieve faster language acquisition, because they enhance the motivation of students and ensure the creation of a distant communicative environment remotely from native speakers.

The results of the study

Observations of these technologies use indicate that they really contribute to the rapid development of FL through the development of all types of language activities through the use oflnternet resources.

Conclusion

Huge educational potential of the Internet information environment certainly promotes increasing sociocultural competence in the course of training FL. The Internet creates unique conditions for acquaintance with cultural diversity of the countries of target language, unlike traditional textbooks of foreign language. Development of educational Internet resources allowed to obtain them as the universal servant for studying FL. Educational Internet resources (along with printing textbooks and manuals) can be also aimed at the development of foreign - language communicative competences (respectively the kind of speech activity). As we know the abilities of speech activity seem to be following: productive (speaking and writing) and receptive (listening and reading) [3, 364]. And however it is difficult to subdivide them strictly one from another, as the ability to separate the main information from minor can belong both to listening and reading, and to state and reason the point of view - to speaking and writing. Besides the obtained abilities reached by means of educational Internet resources in the course of training FL correspond requirements of modern higher school on this subject. It means that the Internet resources will promote achievements of main objectives in training FL. So five mentioned above types of educational Internet resources (hotlist, treasure hunt, subject sampler, multimedia scrapbook) will favorably influence the development of communicative and speech abilities of students. The efficiency of their use in educational process will depend on compliance of materials to educational tasks at certain grade levels. The development of Web - based language teaching and learning activities ensures it to be an exciting and constantly developing sphere. While computer programmers, instructional designers and computational linguists steadily push the extremes of the field, language instructors can use the basic tools of discussion boards and Weblogs, HTML, JavaScript, RealAudio, and CGI scripts to create dynamic, interactive, and functional materials for their courses on the World Wide Web.

References:

1. Alexandra Schultheis Moore. Sunka Simon. Globally Networked Teacliing in the HumanitiesTheories and Practices. 1st EditionRoutledge. NY, 2015.