We live in a progressive and creative fast-changing world where almost all processes are associated with the use of advanced technologies. Nowadays it is hard to imagine traditional forms of education without integration with modern technologies. Every day the number of Internet resources and applications that are successfully used in the process of teaching a foreign language is growing. This diversity, in turn, creates the problem of the correct choice of Internet tools for teachers. The article proposes ways of working in social networks and applications, which make it possible to rationally use the possibilities of virtual communication for educational purposes. The research shows that by the correct usage of modern tools and Internet resources in the process of teaching a foreign language, it gives tremendous results in the development of skills such as expansion of vocabulary, correct speech structure, pronunciation, development of speaking skills, creativity in expressing thoughts and broadening person's horizons in general. The use of Internet technologies for educational purposes is also highly appreciated by the fact that it is not always possible to find a native speaker in real life, while on the Internet this can be easily done at any convenient time.
Introduction
Education was always considered as a non-stop process of development and history shows that humanity achieved a huge progress on every epoch starting from ancient ages till modern times of advanced technologies and endless opportunities. Due to the challenges humanity faces today, society becomes creative in learning and discovering. Everyday life proves the need for action and creativity in education because a progressive society starts from a highly-educated individual. In this regard, today there is a great demand for educational institutions and teachers. Each teacher who develops his work should be able to use best practices. In terms of globalization of modern life, a person is under the influence of a very intense flow of information, including in a foreign language. A significant part of the information people receive through information and communication technologies that permeate all spheres of human activity. Comprehensive student development, quality education, good knowledge of the English language is important to achieve good results in becoming a competitive professional. That’s why teaching the interstate English language using new social networks is becoming increasingly important in the Republic of Kazakhstan. Learning a foreign language is a difficult and interesting job. The goal of learning a foreign language is to learn how to speak a foreign language, communicate and strive to find a common language and strengthen relationships, while the educational goal is to learn how to express and defend your opinion, based on the formation of a culture of listening to others[1, p.405]. In the process of learning a foreign language, it is very important to correctly teach the language, speak, write, and expressively learn. Teaching a foreign language, it is assumed that we teach the speech culture of the language being studied, so the main goal of teaching English — is the formation of the basics of communication of students in the learning language in real life. As you know, at present the most important requirement for the content of educational programs is their reliance on teaching the language as a communicative activity [2, p.30], on solving problems from real practical activity using the language studied.
Experimental
In recent years, the use of the resources of the global computer network has contributed to the development of intercultural communication, and has significantly helped in finding the necessary information for students on scientific, professional and social topics of interest to them. One of the means of developing this competency in the practice of teaching foreign languages is social networks. Social networks are special online services with the possibility of virtual communication and contact through written or video messages. [3, p.44]. It is possible to study English with friends or alone, in English courses or on your own, with or without a native speaker. There are many ways to plunge headlong into the world of the English language. One of them is learning English using social media. Education in high schools with the help of social networks increases the quality and importance of learning a foreign language. Learning a language with the help of information and social networks is an effective system that contributes to the development of a student's language skills on their own. Social networks are very popular not only among young people, among users you can find people of different age. In this regard, it is advisable to introduce the use of social networks in the educational process. Teachers and educators often think that social networks only distract young people from their studies, but their use can make the learning process very effective, increasing the interest and personal motivation of students to learn a foreign language.
The social network is a powerful tool that allows users to communicate with each other. In the last decade, social networks have become widespread and have evolved for many users into more than just a website. The development of information and social networks in virtual reality is challenging teachers again. The integrated use of new technologies and technical tools in teaching English in the classroom facilitates many of the teacher's complex tasks and allows us to develop fundamentally new approaches to this matter. One of these new ways is to teach the language using social networks. The correct usage of modern tools and Internet resources in the process of teaching a foreign language, it gives tremendous results in the development of skills such as expansion of vocabulary, correct speech structure, pronunciation, development of speaking skills, creativity in expressing thoughts and broadening person's horizons in general. The use of Internet technologies for educational purposes is also highly appreciated by the fact that it is not always possible to find a native speaker in real life, while on the Internet this can be easily done at any convenient time. When using social networks in learning English it helps you: [4, p.18].
- in teaching vocabulary;
- to keep speech rhythm;
- to maintain the dialogue, monologue;
- in writing letters;
- to explain grammatical structures and helps students remember, etc.
Instructively, university curricula can be adapted, with more or less efficiency, to the tasks of forming user competencies, but in terms of providing orientation of students in the virtual space the university of modern culture has neither the necessary conceptual apparatus, nor the methodological support, nor the prepared teaching corps. In a sense, the starting positions of givers and students in the face of the ambiguity of a virtual challenge are equal. One thing face-to-face interaction, oral-speech exchange, and other — written print-mediated exchange, and finally, the third is electronic exchange with people whose birth coincided with the beginning of the virtual era. Not the secret, for example, that their computer information is competence. It often turns out to be higher than the corresponding competence of teachers. It is clear that our students have radically changed. They do not match that educational system that is designed for their training. Students changed in comparison with students of previous years and returning to the previous order is absolutely impossible. This is so called the rapid spread of social networks in the last decades of the 20th century. It is not surprising when students note that often faced situations in which their computer knowledge exceeded the knowledge of teachers. Of course we understand social networks as a means of mass communication and knowledge transfer and analyzing modern trends in the socio-cultural development of society, in particular globalization and intensive informatization of social and cultural processes, we can talk about the emergence of a new social space, the so-called virtual reality. The popularity of various social networks varies from region to region in the whole world. For example, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Duolinguo, Tandem etc. [5]. There are a large number of social networks that can be combined into two groups based on the criterion of access to them:
- publicly accessible social networks for which professional, age and gender are not important features of the participants. Examples of such networks include: Facebook, VKontaktе and many others;
- special networks that are created for participants united by a certain attribute. As a rule, participants of such social networks become by invitation (they are closed).
In addition to general social networks, there are also specially designed for training language social networks. They allow you to learn a foreign language on your own, without direct contact with the teacher. In turn, language social networks can be classified by specialization, accessibility of information and geographical feature [6, p.35].
The use of social networks and language learning application allows you:
- to organize work on the development of foreign language speech activities of students outside the classroom due to such didactic properties as multimedia, interactivity, hypertext organization of educational material;
- social networks make it possible to diversify independent educational activities, use the language being studied as a means of communication already at the initial stage of training;
- tasks and exercises based on the material of social networks suggest the development of various communicative skills, for example: to participate in a discussion, write written messages, search and select information.
Using social networks in English lessons allows you to study texts and information. Even students with poor reading skills are interested in working with computers, because in some cases the computer shows what they do not know and comes to the rescue.
In the field of modern education, the most widely used the following information technologies: electronic textbooks, interactive training resources (simulators), virtual environments (virtual laboratories, classrooms, museums and etc.), electronic databases, reference and information sources (online translators, electronic dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc.), electronic libraries, electronic collections (photo, sound, video files). There are special groups for watching films, listening to audiobooks, reading magazines of any orientation, and discussion and communication in them is conducted only in foreign language.
- given the active use of modern technologies in our society, there is every reason to believe that as an extracurricular activity, social networks, especially linguistic ones, are an effective method of learning English.
There are three main ways how to use social media to learn English:
- Follow English-related groups on social media. These are often pages of online language schools.
- Follow other English-language channels of interest. It doesn't matter what they are about, let them be groups with beautiful quotes, funny pictures, whatever. If they are in English, that's a big plus.
- Chat with native speakers in the comments, discuss different topics on forums, find friends by interest and communicate with them in correspondence.
There are many sites dedicated to learning English, which allows almost every educational organization to have a social network page. A wide variety of information appears in it: useful links, new words, funny phrases, contests for everyone, grammar comments, polls on various topics, and much more. Everyone can join the weekly discussions and practice their writing skills in a friendly atmosphere. You will find a lot of useful and interesting things: funny videos, slang, mini-tests, new vocabulary, grammar explanations, tips for those who are going to take international exams, games, links to professional resources, and so on. Ask any question regarding the English language, and get a detailed answer and valuable advice from specialists. In addition, you can simply meet English-speaking people and correspond on any topic, thus practicing all the communication skills in a real situation.
Results and discussion
All of the above technologies can be included and placed in a social network, thus, reducing the time to find the necessary information.
So, one social network has huge opportunities — it is enough to create a community or a conversation with invited users, in a word, a platform where they will placed an electronic library with textbooks and reference material, media files, and, which is not unimportant, where each participant will have access to all posted information. Various types of social media are used in education to different purposes: posting educational content, improving communication and interaction, to facilitate collaboration and group work to provide and receive feedback as asynchronously or synchronously, for sharing any documents or course materials among participants of the educational process.
Information and educational environment create opportunities for integration the internet resources, educational software, technical and communication means of informatization to the educational process of an educational institution. In this case, the information and educational environment is considered as systemically organized set of transmission and storage means information resources, hardware-software and organizational methodological support, focused on satisfaction educational needs of the population.
Model presented information and educational environment in the form of a two-level system, consisting of physical and virtual environments.
The physical environment is a subsystem of the joint educational activities of the university leadership, teachers and students.
In this subsystem, the active part of it is the teaching staff, not only interested, but also possessing an information culture, possessing information and communication technologies.
Virtual environment — a subsystem consisting of the following components:
- technical equipment of workplaces with means informatization;
- hypertext databases;
- virtual communication environment (corporate computer network).
As you know, a person for the active use of the studied language in various communication situations it is necessary to overcome a certain psychological barrier. Also chatting with remote friends provides internal comfort as it interferes the emergence of a feeling of loneliness, often mastering a foreign student. Remote communication on a social network is capable of increase student confidence and stimulate successful mastery of a foreign language. So firstly, these sites are responsible for convenient and easy communication, secondly, provide the opportunity to create interest groups and, thirdly, erase age, territorial and social differences communication participants. The experience showed that social networks can be very convenient and effective tool that complements standard learning tools. There is an opportunity to increase the variety and visibility of educational materials, while remaining within the framework of the familiar environment of communication for students. As a result, students begin to be more interested in the subject and show higher learning outcomes.
To support the process of learning a foreign language, it is necessary to use special educational materials of social networks designed taking into account the goals and content of training. Teacher should take into account that the main goals of promoting educational services in social networks are: attracting new students; formation of communication ties with the target audience.
Despite the fact that the number of groups in created to ensure the availability of educational services is increasing daily, there is still the problem of the lack of a methodology of using educational resources in the Internet. Therefore, we will focus on methodologies, which are based on the active development by students of foreign language intercultural communicative competence and which are based on the principles of their personal inclusion in the learning process, interpersonal and intercultural interaction in the language being studied.
In addition to being educational potential, they also help students to adapt to the life.
Language social networks have a number of advantages: they speed up the learning process, improve the quality of assimilation of the material, contribute to the growth of students' interest in the English language, help improve listening skills based on audio files and multimedia, allow you to expand your vocabulary with the vocabulary of modern English and etc.
Most students agree that language social networks contribute to the enrichment of vocabulary and the assimilation of oral speech of English. The rest believes that it depends on the kind of language social network.
Thus, the language social network is an assistant in teaching English. The teacher only needs to properly organize the independent or group work of students.
On social networks, students can find a large amount of useful information necessary to successfully complete the assignment. The use of linguistic social networks in learning English makes the learning process interesting and exciting. Moreover, they increase a person's motivation to learn English both in the classroom, in the classroom and at home, which opens up new prospects for the development of students' independent work. With the help of social networks, anyone can get additional useful information about an issue of interest. At the disposal of students are information videos, forums for authors of printed publications, magazines, newspapers, educational audio and video recordings. Thus, we have every reason to believe that language social networks are an effective method of teaching English.
Our students are on a short foot with computers, which is why the main task of the teacher in education now is to find ways to motivate, encourage and stimulate students using modern technologies.
We must begin to create and develop a specific learning environment so that our students can communicate using a variety of modern technologies. They must learn how to receive and exchange information in different ways and how to compose, organize, analyze and synthesize this information so as to draw conclusions and generalizations.
In addition, we must encourage students to become self-directed learners and enable them to collaborate with their leaders in common work.
While the internet can be a valuable teaching tool, it is important to know that its use is not appropriate for all lessons. Instructors should find plans using one or more of the following:
Researching a specific topic.
Various or comparative information.
Critical thinking and analysis.
Use of graphics and drawings.
Collection of information.
Conducting reviews.
To help students, the teacher must correctly organize independent student work. As a preparatory work, he can give students a list of sites that can help with the search for information, familiarize them with the principle of operation of social networks. Such social networks should include [6, p.35]:
- an ongoing basis posting on the page relevant information that may be useful to the audience;
-links to other Internet resources such as: electronic library, class schedule, conditions for participation in conferences and publications, etc.
- stimulating group discussions;
In teaching activities, social networks are actively used during various competitions, conferences, Olympiads; participation in seminars and webinars, both independently and together with students; organizing design and research activities, publishing articles, developing lessons and events, communicating on forums and chats, exchanging experience with colleagues, taking distance courses, conducting lessons, online testing. I find this type of work very convenient and effective in teaching a foreign language, since organized types of work contribute to the development of communication skills and the formation of intellectual skills of students; naturally form the skills and abilities of working with a foreign language text; make it possible to obtain authentic information in the target language and the ability to communicate with its speakers; promote individualization and differentiation of the learning process; provide access to open space and, therefore, carry out socialization and actualization of the personality of students.
Conscious learning of English, which makes it a necessity at its own level, is not a question of the year, therefore one of the questions that arises for professionals engaged in teaching English is: how to learn to speak English fluently, both orally and in writing? What methods and techniques should be used to motivate students? Teachers should pay a special attention to social networks which include communicative methods. Communicative techniques are what help to quickly «switch» thinking to English, without thinking about grammar or pronunciation, but simply «pulling» English out of memory as a whole.
Social the demand in relation to language education has changed throughout the whole a number of decades, but its main meaning has always been to master foreign language.
Conclusions
However, we must not forget that the negative qualities that users acquire in the virtual world can complicate the real process of socialization in real life and destroy existing social rules. For example trolling, it meant posting messages on the internet in order to provoke a reaction. In the end, it is too late to realize that rules and regulations based on internal rules on social networks do not always comply with public standards and will be prosecuted for violating them.
Other drawbacks of social media are also: oversupply entertainment information, lack of tight control, ignoring ethical issues, as well as inaccurate content. Overall use social media in the educational context is still controversial nature and should be considered, both the advantages and disadvantages in order to make it more effective for both teachers and students. However, social media can be an additional tool teaching a foreign language.
Thus, the competent use of social networks in teaching a foreign language allows us to conclude that the projects and communities organized there contribute to the development of communication skills and the formation of intellectual skills in students; naturally form the skills and abilities of working with a foreign language text and make it possible to obtain authentic information in the target language and the ability to communicate with its carriers; promote individualization and differentiation of the learning process; provide access to open space and, therefore, carry out socialization and actualization of students' personality.
All things considered, it seems reasonable to assume that the role of real communication with the teacher during training is great and it is difficult to replace it anything, but the potential of language social networks is great: they can be used not only for independent work, but also in English lessons. So the language social network is an assistant in teaching English. Especially in remote learning mode. The teacher needs only organize independent or group work of students.
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