FORMING FUTURE FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHERS’ PHONOLOGICAL COMPETENCE

Abstract

The article deals with peculiarities of forming future foreign language teachers’ phonological competence. The notion "phonological competence" and its constituents are specified. The stages of forming future foreign language teachers’ phonological competence are defined. The examples of tasks peculiar for each stage are suggested. Phonological competence as a part of linguistic competence includes knowledge and skills of perception and production of sounds (phonemes) of the language and ways of their implementation in a specific context (allophones), phonetic charecteristics of phoneme distinction; phonetics of the sentence (prosody); the stress and rhythm of the phrase, intonation; phonetic reduction, peculiarities of pronunciation of various dialects. On the basis of the four principles of foreign language teaching: principle of comparative analysis of phonological systems of native and foreign languages, the principle of conscious and imitating pronunciation training, the principle of visualization in teaching pronunciation; the principle of communicative organization of pronunciation training. Depending on the extent of difficulty mastering of the phoneme of the English language is determined by the method of its introduction, the nature and sequence of phonetic exercises, their diversity. However, the stages of formation of phonetic skills always include: 1. tentatively preparatory; 2. stereotypically situational; 3. variative-situational, in the process of which the introduction of the sound automation of students’ actions with the sounds of a foreign language take place. At each of the suggested stages specific activities are applied. Thus, “Minimal Pairs Bingo”, “Odd One Out”, “Run and Grab”, “Fruit Salad”, “Chinese Whispers”, “Happy Family”, etc are recommended tasks for the sound automation of students’ actions with the sounds of a foreign language whereas for successful teaching English intonation patterns different types of interactive activities are applied in the process of learning.