* To teach the rule of the application definite article "the" with geographical names;
* To develop speaking skills;
* To develop reading skills.
Stages of the lesson:
* Organizational minute– 2 minutes.
* Speech training – 10 minutes.
* Work with lexical units – 10 minutes.
* Work with grammar rules – 20 minutes.
* Summing up the lesson – 3 minutes.
Course of the lesson:
I. Organizational minute:
- Good morning, students. Today we'll work with the definite article «the» and speak about different countries. Now I want you to remember basic grammar rules concerning use of definite article (students give their suppositions).
II. Main part of the lesson:
1. Speech training:
- You know, different countries have different landscapes. Tell me what landscapes do you know? (Slide of the presentation)
What can you say about them?
2. Work with lexical units:
-Please, say what is typical of? (Slide of the presentation)
- America
- Great Britain
- Kazakhstan
- And now you are tomake up the word combinations (slide of the presentation):
Flat Lakes
Deep Plains
High Prairies
Vast Mountains
Huge Oceans
Unique Canyons
3. Work with grammar rules:
- The aim of the today's lesson is to learn the rule of the application of the definite article with geographical names(slide of the presentation). I'll try to explain you this rule (teacher explains everything with the help of different tables, schemes and examples).
- Please, put the article where necessary (slide of the presentation):
1) ... Volga is the longest river.
2) ... Moscow is the capital of Russia.
3) ... Australia is an island.
4) We had a holiday in ... Black sea.
5) ... United Kingdom consists of 4 parts.
6) ... Baikal is a lake of fresh water.
- And now, using the maps of the USA, the UK and Kazakhstan, try to find the proper names with the definite article (slide of the presentation).
4. Summing up the lesson:
- Please, try to remember all the words and rules we have studied today and answer the questions:
What landscapes do you know?
What is typical of the USA?
What is typical of Great Britain?
Where definite article “the” is used?
Topic of the third lesson is "The Price of Fame".
This model-lesson is conducted in the form of discussion with application of multimedia technologies.
The objectives of the lesson:
* To improve the skills of conversation;
* To develop the ability to extract certain information from heard audio-file (listening skills);
* To improve the ability of holding the discussion, to teach the culture of discussion;
* To educate the ability of working in groups and independently;
* To interest in learning English.
Equipment: multimedia projector; screen, slides with celebrities' photos, audio-files with the songs of Marilyn Monroe, John Lennon, Andrei Mironov and extract from radio program (CD "New Opportunity Intermediate").
The course of the lesson:
I. Organizational minute:
- There's the bell. Please, stand up. Hello, my dear boys and girls. I’m glad to see you again. I hope you’re all right, aren’t you? (Yes, we are, thank you. And how are you?) I’m fine too, thanks. As you have already noticed, our today’s lesson is a bit extraordinary, first of all, because of the guests who are sitting behind you and watching our work. But I’m sure this fact won’t disturb you and you’ll be working hard.
Now, make yourselves comfortable. Try to be active during the lesson and enjoy yourselves at the same time.
II. Main part of the lesson
1. The beginning of the discussion:
- It's time to start the meeting of our Discussion Club (slide of the presentation). Today we are going to look at fame, so the issue of our meeting is Price of Fame (slide of the presentation).
Do you think the lesson is going to be interesting? (Yes, we do.) Why? (Possible answers: -Because I’m interested in the topic and I’d like to express my opinion on it. - And I want to listen to my classmates’ opinions, compare them with mine and maybe argue with them. – I hope to learn something new. Etc…)
Glad to hear it.
Sometimes we think that celebrities don’t have any problems, that they have everything they want and that's why can't be unhappy at all. I suppose that during our meeting you’ll get convinced it isn’t so.
And now say: Would you, personally, like to be famous? (Students’ own answers)
2. The report about the results of conducted survey concerning the issue:
- Azamat had to do a survey among our school-leavers. Sasha, report on the results of your survey, please.
(I asked 50 students of our school: “Would you like to be famous? Why (not)?”
20 students (40%) are eager to be famous. A few words about the reasons. All of them are sure that celebrities get a lot of money which helps them avoid different problems and makes them happy. 5 students (10%) want to have their own fans who will follow them everywhere and admire them. 30 students (60%) find nothing interesting in fame, because celebrities often have no right to privacy and their lifestyle is stressful.)
- Thank you, Azamat. According to the results of your survey, rather many students would like to be famous.
3. "Try to guess the celebrity" game:
- And now, let’s have a look at some real celebrities.
1) - Listen to the song and try to guess the singer. (sounds the song of Marilyn Monroe) (Marilyn Monroe)
- You’re right (slide of the presentation) Vanya has prepared a brief story about her life. (Brief information about the life of the star)
- Thank you, Vanya.
2)- One more song, please. Who’s the singer? (sounds the song of John Lennon) (John Lennon) (slide with the star's photo)
- Lena, will you tell us about this star? (Brief information about the singer)
- Thanks a lot.
3) As for this celebrity, she wasn’t a singer, but she is well-known all over the world. Look at her photo. (slide of the presentation) Who’s she? (Princess Diana)
- Askhat, tell us about her. (Brief information about Princess Diana)
- Thank you very much.
4)- We are very proud of Russian celebrities, too. So, listen to the song. Do you recognize this famous person? (Andrei Mironov) (Slide with the photo of Mironov)
- Sasha, it's your turn to tell us about Andrei Mironov. (Information about Andrei Mironov)
- Thank you.
4. Reflections of tricks of fortune:
- My dear students, what do you think connects these 4 different celebrities? (Possible answers: They were very talented, creative but died young. Etc…)
Why? (Possible answers: Because of their stressful lives. Etc…)
5. Listening comprehension of the extract from radio program (CD “New Opportunity Intermediate”)
- Now, I'd like you to listen to the radio program about fame. After that you’ll have to list the advantages and disadvantages of fame mentioned there. (Sounds the extract from radio program)
- So, what are the advantages of fame according to the program? (Possible answers: - Celebrities get enormous amounts of money. - They demand huge contracts. - Some of them earn a fortune from advertising.)
- And what about disadvantages? (Possible answers: - Celebrities have no right to privacy because paparazzi and fans always follow them. - Rather many famous people die young because of their stressful lifestyles. - People expect them to be always successful and that’s stressful.)
6. Work in groups:
Let's divide into 2 groups. You're the first group. Try to find all possible arguments in favor of fame. You are the second group. Your task is to think of all possible disadvantages of being famous. You have 2 minutes. After that one representative from the group will present the arguments of the team.
7. Summing up the discussion:
- It's time to finish our debates and draw a conclusion. (Representatives of the teams present the result of their work)
- To sum up, everything in our life has good and bad sides. If you are a celebrity, you should admit that there are a lot of people who admire, love and respect you. But on the other hand, there are also people who envy and harm you. If you are not ready for it, change your life, choose another job where you can feel comfortable.
III. Final stage of the lesson:
- When we started our lesson, you expected it to be interesting. And what are your emotions like now? (Studens’ own answers)
- I’m pleased with your work and think you all deserve good and excellent marks. Thank you for the lesson.
- Your homework is to write an essay “Arguments for and against being famous”
After getting acquainted with the conducted lessons, we have to make some conclusions.
The aim of the approbation was to find out the effectiveness of the application of information technologies to educational process on praxis. In accordance with the aim we tried to define the changes in the English language learning motivation and to find out the peculiarities of the impact of the information technologies in educational process.
In order to find it out we conducted questionnaire survey and interview with students.
The most significant impact of the application of information technologies in educational process consisted in an incredible growth of the students' interest. The students aspired to come and take active participation in the course of the lesson. They didn't want even to leave the classroom. They stopped missing classes. Students' accomplishments of the homework become much better. The students were interested in conducting such lessons. They suggested their own topics for the next lesson, offered their help by preparing the presentation and other material.
Also we noticed that the accents have displaced from "the good mark" motivation to the "getting qualitative skills" and "interesting intercourse" motivations. Exterior motivation discontinued to play the most important role in learning English. Intrinsic motives became weighty.
It is difficult to define exactly for such a short period of time, whether all the aspects of the speech activity (speaking, listening, reading, and writing) were improved or not. But resting on the growth of interest and motivation, we can predict not less significant improvement of these skills.
Thus, we can make the following conclusions:
- The rate of interest to the content of the lesson increased considerably, but the level of interest in marks become lower;
- The activity of the students during the lessons significantly increased;
- The students began to feel satisfaction from the work done by them.
Teacher’s task is to activate students’ perceiving activity in the process of teaching foreign languages. Contemporary pedagogical technologies such as teaching in cooperation, project method, using new informational technologies and the Internet resources help to realize personal orientational approach in teaching, support individualization and differentiation of teaching. All these tasks are easy to complete with the help of modern information technologies on the whole, and teaching computer programs particularly.
Using computer during English lessons significantly increases academic process intensivity. Computer teaching assimilates a larger amount of material, than it was acquired using traditional teaching conditions. Besides, by using computer material is acquired more substantially. Computer supplies multisupporting control of academic process that is current intermediate, total. Using the computer control of the quality of students’ knowledge helps to achieve the highest rate of objectiveness of valuation. Besides, computer control considerably economizes academic time, as it checks students’ knowledge simultaneously.
That gives the possibility for teacher to grant attention to the creative aspects of working with students. Computers make favorable conditions for student’s individual works at the English lessons. Students can use computer for the self-control of their knowledge.
It’s important to mention, that the above mentioned facts were confirmed by the conducted model-lessons. The results were amazing. The rate of interest to the content of the lesson increased considerably. The students aspired to come and didn’t want to leave the classroom. They stopped missing classes. Their accomplishment of the homework became much better. The students were interested in conducting such lessons. They suggested their own topics for the next lessons, offered their help by preparing the computer presentation.
The accents have displaced from the “good mark” motivation to the “getting qualitative skills” and “interesting intercourse” motivations. The students began to feel satisfaction from the work done by them.
The essential advantage of such lessons is that they are able to create the situations close to real communication acts. And with such real communication acts, rather than teacher-contrived ones, students feel empowered and less afraid to contact others.
Students believe they learn faster and better with computer-mediated communication. In situations where all are learners of a foreign language, there is also a feeling of equality. In these situations students feel less stressed and more confident in a language learning situation.
In general use of information technologies in classrooms reported to improve self-concept and mastery of basic skills, more student-centered learning and engagement in the learning process, more active processing resulting in higher-order thinking skills and better recall, gain confidence in directing their own learning.
However, there are also some problems with the application of the information technologies in the educational process. We still cannot define the best method of work with the computer programs. Moreover some teachers do not believe in the positive effects of the CALL. And others just can’t manage to master the skills of work with new tools.
The results of theinvestigation allow us to come to the conclusion, that the given hypothesis is implemented and all the given tasks are solved.
Anyway, we shouldn’t forget, that the effectiveness of computer-assisted language learning cannot reside in the medium itself but only in how it is put to use. Those who expect to get magnificent results simply from the purchase of expensive and elaborate systems will likely be disappointed. But those who put computer technology to use in the service of good pedagogy will undoubtedly find ways to enrich their educational program and the learning opportunities of their students.
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