MEANS FOR FORMING FOREIGN COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE OF PRIMARY SCHOOL PUPILS: RESULTS OF EMPIRICAL STUDIES

Abstract

The author of the article defines types and kinds of exercises and tasks, characterizes their functions for competence-oriented teaching foreign language communication among primary school pupils. Authors’ views are based on the essence of trends in the development of modern school-based foreign education, age-specific features and potential opportunities of primary schoolchildren. Considering the exercises and tasks as the main means for pupils to master a foreign language, the author describes their characteristics and gives recommendations of its use for the purpose of forming a foreign language communicative competence. The article presents and characterizes the qualitative characteristics of the educational activities that pupils of primary school should learn to do with the help of exercises and tasks in the process of studying a foreign language. According to the author, the basis of the typology of exercises and tasks is the category of communication and the stages of its organization in the educational process. Accordingly, it is advisable to distinguish between exercises training activities for communication, structuring the act of communication (at the reproductive and reproductive-productive levels), form the mechanisms of communication (at the productive level) and provide the formation of skills to control the level for abilities formation to communicate in a foreign language. In the process of performing such exercises, a pupil overcomes the stages from reception to products, mastering the experience of constructing their own statements in oral and written forms, while in a continuous communicative mode. This necessitates the need to determine: a) the appropriate type of exercise aimed at developing skills in oral and written communication; b) the hierarchy of exercises in the constructed system; c) the form of performing exercises (individual, pair, group); d) volume of linguistic and speech material, its complexity and difficulty of assimilation; e) the level of training (experience) of pupils in the performance of certain exercises, which depends on the degree of their language and speech preparedness and individual characteristics.