Twelve year education in high schools: problems and prospects
Table of contents: The Kazakh-American Free University Academic Journal №3 - 2011
Author: Sticheva Olga, South-Kazakh State Pedagogical Institute, Kazakhstan
When speaking about the necessity
of special preliminary study of school children going to continue education in
higher school it should be noted that the transition to twelve year school in Kazakhstan
is becoming very actual as it provides the future students with the organization
of different forms of professional (primary) and special (advanced) grounding.
The period is not aiming to
eliminate shortcomings: it aims at creating conditions for qualitative
mastering the disciplines of higher school. The Project of the State Normative
Document on twelve-year school (Astana, 2005) is oriented on modernization,
improvement, renovation of education, capable of meeting the new demands,
norms, and regulations.
In this period the role of
qualitative language grounding is extremely high. It may be done thorough deep
and versatile investigation of the lingua didactic experience, analysis, and
selection of the most rational and effective ways that are called for solving
teaching tasks. To achieve this goal successfully one should first of all
define the structure and the content of teaching, these are presented in the
syllabus meeting the State Normative Document requirements. The aim of the syllabus
for school graduates is to show the ways for systematization and developing
linguistic theory knowledge got in the basic school and techniques of forming
skills and habits in using them in different communicative situations. The
tasks of teaching at that period are aimed at developing logical and
associative thinking of the learners, forming firm linguistic knowledge,
improving all speech activity types, striving for self-perfection.
We have compiled a syllabus in
which we present the author’s vision of the twelve form period instruction
tasks. The syllabus is based on both general and particular didactic principles
that take into consideration school graduates’ experience in mastering languages.
They are:
- the principle of considering real
and potential possibilities of the learners;
- the principle of organizing repetition
including the elements of new into the content of each lesson;
- the principle of the linguistic
material correction based on communicative tasks determination;
- principle of interference in bi-
and poly-lingual teaching;
- the principle of creative
approach to using the interactive innovative techniques in the aspect of the
status of the target language (native, non-native, foreign);
- the principle of using the professionalization
material;
- the principle of organizing universal
regime for the work on forming skills and habits in general subjects.
Compiling the syllabus for the applicants
seeking admission to higher school we proceeded from the assumption that an
ideal model of a school leaver is supposed to be an intellectual, aware of the
language and culture of his own nation and taking interest in the languages and
cultures of other nations. New conditions of teaching were also taken into
consideration. They help to raise the school leavers’ activity, their wish to
realize their own possibilities in realizing the perspectives of teaching.
Special attention was paid to the principles of continuity of secondary and
higher school and teaching perspectives; as in different schools one may
observe both the firmness of the previous work and ”pedagogical cracks”;
recommendations should be found on how to escape them.
The content correction was organized
on the basis of entropy approach, that is by linear-boundaries setting data on
linguistic and their adequate usage in composing texts of different styles and
genres. Repetition and generalization character of learning the subject and its
communicative nature supposes to introduce new data for preliminary study.
Theoretical foundations for lingua
didactics are usually based on a systematic structural approach. It singles out
three groups of notions. The first group lists notions of general didactics (methods
of scientific research, ways and techniques of teaching, knowledge,
skills and habits, lessons, didactics, stages of the lesson and others)
and psychological characteristics (thinking, memory, perception, interpretation,
memorizing, reproducing, usage).
The second group of notions
reflects the peculiarities of the subject taught and may be characterized as
the discipline general methodical basis, which is fully correlated with the
term lingua didactics.
Having analyzed the possibilities
of the discipline and considered the structure elements of the subject we
singled out the following points as the main content components: aims of
teaching language, means of teaching, and organization of learners’ activity at
different stages of mastering the discipline. The enlisted elements compose the
structure of lingua didactic knowledge.
The third group of notions is
related to the content of concrete themes. For example, the content structure
of teaching material related to the theme ”Phonetics” would contain the
following elements of knowledge: aims of teaching, content of teaching,
particular principles of phonetic acquisition, peculiarities of didactic material
selection for mastering phonetic laws, the role and function of audio-lingual
means, peculiarities of students’ speech activity.
Teaching school graduates requires
a special system of work. It should be directed on simultaneous theoretical and
practical mastering of language phenomena by means of correct selection of training,
linguistic and communicative exercises, parallel developing of all the types of
speech activity – listening, speaking, reading and writing. Nowadays in the content
of linguistic disciplines cycles normative language aspect prevails, less attention
is given to the communicative aspect of the subject. Necessity arises to a more
thorough selection of the material for mastering the themes “Speech Culture (Etiquette)”,
and “Stylistics”.
Mastering a language supposes the
existence of the communicative approach as a basis, so it is necessary to
organize the correct dosing of the material and systematize the data on
functional stylistics. For this one should organize correct selection of
linguistic theory, rational introduction of speech notions and tasks for training
exercises targeting the necessary grammar minimum mastering, and working out
stable communicative habits. We think that the problem may be solved by
introducing elective courses into school teaching and by means of
well-organized subject interaction between the disciplines of humanitarian
cycle that are remarkably related with communicative function
The syllabus pays much attention to
forming universal skills. While studying humanities the pupil is supposed to a)
learn to compose simple and complex plans of the texts and use these plans correctly,
b) get information on theses, c) learn peculiarities of free, text bounded
and planned synopsis, d) get ideas on the spheres of application of review and
annotations, e) get acquainted with the informative and indicative reports
functioning, f) master the skills of compiling references and reviews. These
skills will be improving at other lessons but the universal procedure of their
forming and structuralizing is done at linguistic lessons.
It should be noted that the group
of habits pointed out is not only of universal and interiorized character but
it also directly promotes to the prospect principle: having mastered them while
school leaving period the student will feel comfortable and will be able to
organized independent cognitive activity. For this purpose the senior pupils
are associated with research work. Research is actively included into school
practice, and becomes an important mark for social status of secondary
educational institutions. In lyceums and gymnasiums teachers’ linguistic
associations are being transformed into chairs. This is done not only for
improving teachers’ research activities, but for forming pupils’ research
skills.
Researching activity is a
remarkable form for schoolchildren development. It is organized to raise their
theoretical knowledge and to work out an independent and creative approach to
learning.
Changes in the sphere of education
are closely connected with teaching languages at school. Increasing the importance
of the school subjects demands a new approach to mastering languages and
different variants of their teaching in particular. Nowadays theory and
practice development of language teaching is characterized by different
researches, aiming at the more effective ways of teaching that lead to forming
a solid scientific foundation. It will provide for the correct an effective
procedure of pupils’ knowledge repetition and generalization.
Table of contents: The Kazakh-American Free University Academic Journal №3 - 2011
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