The article deals with the specifics of the use of Mass Media in the English language teaching process. The need to study English language in modern society is emphasized in the article; analyzed the most effective methods and approaches of the use of Mass Media in the English language teaching, such as newspaper and magazine articles, TV, radio, Internet resources, specialized educational software designed to develop the skills of different types of speech activity — oral communication, listening, reading, writing, and skills of detailed analysis of the different styles of the English language.
There are a lot of countries in the world but languages which are spoken by their citizens are much more. In this case we speak about several thousands. International languages exist for the purpose of communication and allow exchanging information and it does not depend on nationality or place of living. English is one of them. It is the language of international communication for all the humanity. That’s why it is difficult to revalue the importance of the English language in modern world. Undoubtedly the range of the English language spreading is huge at the present time that language can not be identical in different spheres. In spite of presence of different variants of the English language and specific peculiarities for every nationality the English language remains the most popular around the world.
In general the whole political, economic, scientific and sport life of the world goes in English. The English language is defined as official and working language of UNO and exactly the English language is in the list of six international languages of UNO. It is impossible to know all national languages of each country which you cooperate with that’s why various summits and meetings of heads of states, signing of laws and decrees, negotiations and debates run in English. International trade, work of banking system, an activity of conveying system overland, afloat and in the air carry out in English. The Olympic Games and different competitions either chose the English language as an official language.
The English language allows raising human mental capacity. It becomes possible to read the most outstanding works in the original, listen to music compositions which are known all over the world and understand their meaning. Thus it is rather difficult to imagine modern world and our life without the English language. It firmly comes in it and completely changes the view of communication in general [1].
Major part of Internet pages with necessary information spreads in English. Major part of computer programs and applications are made up in English either. Expressing feelings and emotions, naming subjects and events, using household devices and modern technologies are called in English in everyday life.
Success in any business connects with English. If a person can fluently speak English, the ways to any companies and field of activity will open for him. The English language mastering allows personality’s developing, spending spare time and the level of scholarship and communication. It’s a great opportunity for tourists and travelers not to be lost in foreign country but spend valuable time with pleasure. Real communication with people from different parts of planet, live or due to Internet, develops mental outlook, changes mind and improves communicative skills, adds self-assertion and also gives a lot of positive emotions and useful pleasant acquaintances.
Since people have realized the necessity of foreign languages learning, new efficient methods of foreign languages teaching began to appear. The new model of language education entails the update of content, improvement of methods, organizational forms and means of training activity directed on intellectual pupils' development, formation of skills of independent work with information and use knowledge for sensible tasks solutions which can appear in real situation. Lack of such kind of skills deprives the person of the opportunity to succeed, adapt and become a competitive specialist. Orientation on creative personality's development, the necessity of consideration of their educational, social, economical, cultural and communicative needs demands Mass Media usage, especially newspaper and magazine texts in educational process [2].
In recent years the techniques of Mass Media usage in the foreign languages teaching process are developed intensively. Education becomes more interesting, colorful and emotionally-saturated due to them.
Mass Media creates unique opportunity for foreign languages learners to use authentic means (to listen and to communicate to the native speakers). Mass Media implies television, radio, Internet, newspapers, magazines etc. By mean of information transmission Mass Media can bed divided into:
- Visual —
- Auditive —
- Audiovisual — television,
In the form of text presentation Mass Media can be oral — television and radio and written — press and Internet.
Television is one of the best Mass Media of spreading information (political, cultural, cognitive and educational). It has great opportunities in foreign language teaching. In general television is a unique form of person's development. The results of research reveal while listening a person remembers 15 % of speech information, while looking — 25 % of visual information, while listening and looking — 65 % of information. The usage of television makes the English language teaching process more vivid, convincing and emotional. Informational opportunities of television allow foreign language learners to use authentic means of communication with native speakers. They promote practical imitation of natural language environment. Television reflects social life of society, peculiarities of national mentality, national stereotypes, that's why television can serve as a source of information during the study of culture, traditions and customs of studied language country. Television programs are actual and comfortable source of pupils' knowledge, experience, feelings and impressions strengthening. They help pupils to orient in huge information flow, use it in their lives, professions, and develop skills of creative comprehension and impartial assessment of information. Audiovisual mean television is one of the most effective during teaching of listening comprehension [3].
Nowadays there are a lot of telecasts for children that teach English and children enjoy them. Such kinds of programs found basic lexical material on the early stage of child's development.
Thus, television usage as the mean of foreign languages teaching allows to implement the following tasks: practical (language acquisition as the mean of communication), pedagogical, developmental and educational.
Authentic newspaper article doesn't almost concede in comparison with another authentic text of Mass Media during foreign language teaching in artificially created language environment. Newspaper article, presenting in printed form makes possible to multiple individual reading with the purpose of additional understanding and searching certain language facts in the text. Visual material perception helps to remember better and remain fixedly in the memory. Newspaper article is easily succumbing to methodic processing and simulation, mainly on the primary stage of teaching. Additionally, systematic studying of newspaper texts helps to develop the methods of independent work that is very important for foreign language learning. Regular work with the newspapers stimulates pupils to reading periodicals outside the classroom.
Texts of newspapers under consideration are endless source of formation language, speech, social and cultural competence. Completeness and logic of sentence formation, clarity of thought, expressive language means usage are components of speech culture of qualitative newspapers. Effective tasks are connected with titles, content of the articles, filling missed information, advertisement, exchange news, discussion photos, holding press conferences, interviews, prediction events, composition of horoscopes, writing advice columns, broadcasts from the field, TV-programs, weather forecast, puzzles and crosswords and another activities suggested by Paul Sanderson in his book «Using Newspapers in the Classroom». Pupils can read articles, make translations, and analyze the use of neologisms, borrowings, newspaper clichés, slang expressions and conciseness of titles used in publicist style. Discussion of newspaper materials involves pupils into argumentation of discussion and inspires for independent learning of covered topics and additional reading. After regular work with press high school students acquire skills of detailed analysis of newspaper articles, define type, topic, theme, style of the article, evaluate the quality of material feed and comment the existence of facts, quotations and arguments. Pupils make their own conclusions about the article content, evaluate effectiveness of the chosen format and structure, understand the reasons of using certain lexical and syntactical means, see the effect of usage graphical means, photos and etc. Pupils can also make comparative analysis of articles of different countries at the level of content and design and define differences between tabloids and serious press on the example of print and digital versions of articles.
More difficult stage of working with Mass Media is articles writing. It's necessary to help pupils to find out the difference between types of articles (report, announcement, newspaper investigations, advertisement and etc.), to teach collection and presentation information impartially in form of newspaper article due to polemical presentation of points of view for successful implementation of this task by students. The experience of independent writing an article gives the opportunity for children to show their creative literary potential, raise the will of sharing their thoughts and ideas in English, and develop skills of social competence and critical thinking.
School newspapers publication as the final stage of working with Mass Media at the English lessons supposes real experience of using language situations. Editorial boards partition responsibilities and tasks as defining themes which are interesting for readers, selection of the information, interviews and public opinion polls, editing the material and etc. Classroom becomes a place where pupils deal with searching the information in electronic and real world. Working process strengthens friendly relations between classmates and increases the interest to school events. Children work as well in group as independent, learn solving problems independently and build professional relationships. Teacher stops to be the only source of getting knowledge, he becomes helper in learning something new who can guide and support in the process of knowledge construction and education becomes social activity. Project work at school newspapers publication in active student-centered learning environment increases the level of interdisciplinary knowledge and help pupils to develop technical and research skills which it's impossible to use during reading the school book. Pupils get key goal of learning language to use it easily. Careful attention of newspapers to national traditions, customs, folklore, stereotypes, everyday system of values and priorities transform them into source of social and cultural knowledge.
Authentic newspaper text as teaching material has certain difficulties. Current news becomes quickly outdated. Lexical and grammatical peculiarities of the newspaper language create barriers in understanding for pupils. It's necessary to carry out careful selection of texts for elimination of these barriers. It's advisable to include multiple choice, disruption of fact consequence, true or false statements in the tasks directed on certain level of penetration into the semantic content of the text. Besides consequent retelling of the text pupils are recommended drawing up a plan of the text, thesis of retelling, summarizing the author's text, preparing of short message and translating separate sentences. Tasks, which include false statements, tasks, inducing to saying their points of view promote the development of language skills. It's possible to use dialogues, talk shows, meetings, carried out in the form of «round table», conferences which create for pupils’ conditions of real communication and motivate them to express their thoughts within formed language and speech possibilities at the advanced stage of teaching [4].
It is necessary to consider the example of using BBC programs at the lesson to improve listening and speaking skills:
Listen and fill in the spaces.
The British Broadcasting Corporation a new service next year that will make its TV programs on the Internet. Web surfers will be able to download television and radio programs up to a week after they were originally . Director General Mark Thompson the plans for the service, provisionally called «MyBBCPlayer», at the Edinburgh International Television Festival on Saturday. The plan is to the BBC’s strategy to use the Internet to increase its global and reach people all over the world. He did not whether viewers would have to pay a fee to download the programs.
Mr.Thompson is seeking new ways to the Internet. He said: «Every creative leader in the BBC is with the question of what the new technologies and audience behaviors mean for them and their service.» Other options the BBC is with include a simultaneous broadcast of its two main channels. However, this will be to the UK only. In «a departure from past corporation policy», another service is being able to buy BBC music and programs online. Mr. Thompson said:
«The idea that in the of the iPod that the public would not welcome the opportunity to buy a piece of music they heard on the site seems to me to be ».
- vocabulary extension: Choose several of the words from the text. Use a dictionary or Google’s search field (or another search engine) to build up more associations / collocations of each
- Internet: Search the Internet and find more information on the Share your findings with your class in the next lesson.
- letter: Write a letter to the head of the BBC. Tell him what you think of his new idea to put programs online and to sell BBC Read your letters to your classmates in your next lesson. Did you all write about similar things?
- televisionWrite an essay about how important TV is in your What would happen if you had no television? Tell your classmates the main points of your essay in your next lesson. Did you all write about similar things?
Answers. TRUE / FALSE:
- F b. F c. T d. F e. T f. F g. F h. F
And also it is necessary to make appropriate exercises (table 1, table 2).
Synonym matching
T a b l e 1
Phrase matching
T a b l e 2
Appearing of the Internet in education system motivates students to study, broadens the range of individual activity of each pupil, and increases the rate of supplying the qualitative material within one lesson. All these possibilities realize with the help of e-mail communication with the pupils from another countries, creation and conducting joint telecommunication projects, the opportunity of reading books and watching videos in foreign language and listening authentic audio material. Recently watching videos and listening audio in online mode got popular. Internet is a unique way to be on the same wavelength with foreign culture, to watch favorite movies, listen to music, foreign radio stations, know something new about your favourite actor, singer or group and learn English during these actions. Also there are a lot of different websites with interesting and useful audio and video material, different online tutorials which help to learn the language. Nowadays Internet substitutes successfully television, radio, DVD players, newspapers and magazines. You can find everything in Internet. Nowadays the issue of using the Internet in foreign language teaching is quite of current importance. Generally it is connected with such opinion that using Internet as a method of foreign language teaching realizes a lot of goals of education and upbringing [2; 89].
Today computer games are widespread among students. Undoubtedly computer games bring such kinds of harm as deterioration of vision, computer addiction, but one can not deny that they help pupils to learn English language. Many of them are in English and playing them repeatedly helps pupils to remember a lot of words and phrases. Also there are a number of special educational computer games and electronic applications to textbooks and it is possible to mix useful with pleasant things. The teacher should thoroughly select educational computer games and authentic material according to psychological and linguistic features of the students.
At the age of modern technologies and globalization it's easier to find new ways and methods of foreign language teaching. Educational process is becoming more interesting. Teachers can share their experience and get valuable advices from colleagues due to Internet. The teacher should guide his students to using Mass Media in a right way in order to master the language successfully.
References
- Basic theory of communication: Textbook / Ed. Prof. M.A.Vassilik, Moscow: Gardariki, 2003, 615
- Speech influence in the field of mass communication, Moscow: Nauka, 1990, 136
- Dobrosklonskaya T.G. Russia and the West: Dialogue of Culture, Issue 7, Moscow: Nauka, 1999, p. 156–167.
- Sanderson Using Newspapers in the Classroom, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, 265 p.