THE SPECIFICS OF TEACHING PRESCHOOLERS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE: GOALS, PRINCIPLES AND FORMS

Аннотация

The relevance of early learning a foreign language is dictated by the needs of society. The progressive development of interethnic ommunication in recent years necessitates teaching children a foreign language, especially English, starting from preschool age. At preschool age, when teaching English, the child, first of all, learns communication. Key words: preschool age, a foreign language, communication, a language barrier, linguistic information, speech interaction, development of the thinking, cognitive and search activities, teaching a foreign language. Preschool age is unique for mastering a foreign language. This is possible due to such mental characteristics of the child as the plasticity of the natural mechanism of speech acquisition, the rapid memorization of linguistic information, the intensive formation of cognitive processes, the ability to analyse and synthesize speech flows in different languages without confusing these languages and their means of expression, a special ability to imitate, the absence of a language barrier. Susceptibility to mastering a foreign language is at a special level up to 8 years, it is already much more difficult to start learning later. One of the main advantages of early learning a foreign language is that young children are still learning their native language, and therefore natural learning strategies will be applied in parallel to mastering a new, non-native language. In this case, teaching children a foreign language will not be more difficult than mastering their native language. Preschool children do not have a deep knowledge of the grammar of their native language, the rules for constructing sentences and forming words, etc. t is easier for them to learn a foreign language because they do not tolerate patterns of changing cases, declensions and conjugations, they do not compare the structures of two different languages. They learn by directly speaking the language. Those children who started learning English from childhood speak much more clearly, without an accent, they understand the speech and culture of another country more. Preschool children do not have psychological barriers. Older children and adults are afraid to make mistakes, to seem ridiculous, and therefore they are often pinched and, as a rule, cannot learn from mistakes. 76 The success of teaching preschoolers a foreign language largely depends on the understanding of the psychological characteristics of a given age, the appropriate teaching methodology and, of course, on the personality of the teacher himself. For learning to be effective, the center must be the child himself, his motives, goals, his unique psychological make-up, i.e. child-student as a person. All methodological decisions of the teacher should be refracted through the "prism of the student's personality". In the period covering preschool age, there are significant transformations in the activity of all psychophysiological systems of the child. Perception becomes multifaceted, meaningful, purposeful, analyzing. Speech has a significant influence on the development of perception - the child begins to actively use the names of qualities, signs, the state of various objects and the relationships between them. The attention of a preschooler reflects his interest in the surrounding objects and the actions performed with them. Gradually, attention becomes more concentrated and stable. Leading the attention of the child, adults give him the means by which he subsequently begins to control his own attention. The memory of a preschooler becomes the leading function of age. If the events had emotional significance and made an impression on the child, they can be remembered for the rest of their lives. The most significant feature of the development of the thinking of a child aged 2-6 years is that his first generalizations are associated with action. Based on the visual-effective form of thinking, a visual-figurative form of thinking begins to take shape. Children become capable of the first generalizations based on the experience of their practical objective activity and fixed in the word. The prerequisites for the development of logical thinking are laid at the end of early childhood, when the sign function of consciousness begins to form in the child. The development of speech goes in several directions: its practical use in communication with other people is being improved, at the same time, speech becomes the basis for the restructuring of mental processes, an instrument of thinking. During the preschool period, the child's vocabulary continues to grow. By the end of preschool age, the process of phonemic development is completed. The grammatical structure of speech develops. Children learn subtle patterns of morphological order (word structure) and syntactic order (phrase construction). An older preschooler can retell the story he has read, describe a picture, convey his impressions of what he saw. An important feature is the em