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Vol. 1, Issue 1

Volume 1, Issue 1

Pages 9–10

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IDEAS AND INNOVATIONS
EDUCATION

The Concept of an Integral Series of Foreign Language Textbooks Taking Into Account Modern Digital Technologies

Andriy V. Berezhnya more
a Andriy V. Berezhny

PhD in Philology, Assistant Professor to the Chair of Theory and Practice of Translation of Roman Languages, Educational and Scientific Institute of Philology, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Kyiv, Ukraine. Address: 11 Tarasa Shevchenko Blvd, Kyiv 01601, Ukraine. Website: https://philology.knu.ua/en/homepage/ E-mail: andbe@ukr.net

December 28, 2021

https://doi.org/10.23999/j.lcsm.2021.1.5

Linguistic Cues to Social Meaning 1, December 2021, 9–10.

Under a Creative Commons license

HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE (APA STYLE)

Berezhny, A. V. (2021). The concept of an integral series of foreign language textbooks taking into account modern digital technologies. Linguistic Cues to Social Meaning, 1, 9–10.

SUMMARY

In this ideas and innovations type of paper, I wish to present you the concept of an integral series of foreign language textbooks for students of 1st–3rd years considering modern digital technologies. The goal is to achieve an increase in the speed of speaking in a foreign language by 25–50% during the first two years of study.

ARTICLE

Our approach to creating an integral series of six semester foreign language textbooks for students of 1st–3rd years involves defining and taking into account the following parameters:

 

1) number of classroom/online academic hours (4–6 per week) for assimilation and mastering of one lesson/unit.

 

2) time for studying the text in the classroom and at home (reading, translation, reverse translation of phrases), for familiarization with comments and for writing and oral exercises (determined by testing of 3 or 4 groups of students). Considering the fact that students have 6 classroom academic hours every day, the time for homework should not exceed 5 hours, because students should not be overtired and have time to rest. Without taking this parameter into account, overloading occurs, which negatively affects the quality of the results.

 

A series of six textbooks for years 1 to 3 is based on the assumption that specialized courses will be taught in the fourth year (bachelor's degree), for which the proposed series of textbooks is not designed.

 

To create an initial textbook (for the first semester of the first course), it is necessary to conduct testing of a sufficient number of school graduates in order to determine their stock of native and foreign language lexemes.

 

The textbook should take into account:

 

  • passive and active vocabulary of native and foreign language at the beginning of education: reading, listening, written, and spoken.

  • vocabulary testing of students of all courses except the first.

  • focal vocabulary for specialized texts.

 

Based on these indicators, texts with new vocabulary material are selected. For this, the results of statistics and the capabilities of computer technologies should be used to determine the new/next vocabulary, its study, consolidation, repetition/refreshing and testing/checking of the main and additional materials.

 

The initial textbook must contain a definition of the method of processing materials and monitoring the material learned during three academic years:

 

  1. listening to the text at three different speeds (0.75–1.0–1.25) based on an indicator of approximately 130 words per minute at a normal pace (1.0) and different volumes (30–40–60 Db).

  2. work in pairs, threes.

  3. periodicity and forms of repetition and refreshing of the studied material.

  4. computerized, written, and oral testing.

 

GOAL

 

To achieve an increase in the speed of speaking in a foreign language by 25–50% during the first two years of study. Fast speech indicates that the speaker has a significant amount of information. From a psychodiagnostic point of view, the ability to speak quickly shows a smaller number of blocks, patterns, and conventions within a person, one`s greater confidence in himself, indicates a reduction in "internal dialogue", that is, pauses for reflection.

 

The creation of textbooks should be based on statistical data: a frequency dictionary of lexemes and word combinations with 3, 4, and 5 words without taking into account auxiliary parts of speech.

 

One textbook is designed for one semester (~15 weeks), 15 units including:

 

  1. text.

  2. its translation.

  3. grammatical commentary with examples.

  4. vocabulary with expansion (+synonyms, idioms, use with various prepositions).

  5. translation and grammar exercises.

  6. for the Portuguese language – American and European versions of the audio recording of the main text.

  7. a small poetry / prose passage for learning by heart.

  8. three to five aphorisms.

  9. listening to the recording without a written presentation for transcription.

  10. control test for learning vocabulary and grammar.

 

Textbooks must contain links to external sources (literary, poetic, and scientific) through QR coding.

 

Each of the six textbooks should give from 500 to 1000 new tokens unknown to the student at the beginning of the semester (revealed by testing). The goal is an active vocabulary of about 3,000 vocabulary entries (not including ALL numerals:).

 

Texts are supposed to be from 1000 to 2000 characters long.

 

Texts can be created by artificial intelligence using the most used words according to the frequency dictionary.

 

In the process of working with the textbooks, the applicants are advised to create an individual vocabulary of the most frequent ready for use new phrases/phrases.