Experimental verification of the effectiveness of methods of teaching future teachers English pronunciation after German

Abstract

One of the main objectives of foreign languages departments of higher educational establishments is to form a sufficient level of future teachers’ communicative competence in both a first and a second foreign language. Its indispensable constituent is phonetic competence which should be paid special attention to in the process of professionally oriented teaching of a foreign language. The article aims to describe the process of preparing, organizing and conducting an experiment on forming future teachers’ phonetic competence in English as a second foreign language after German, as well as to present its results. The experimental teaching was preceded by a pre-experimental test serving to define the students’ interiorized level of those second foreign language professional phonetic competence components that are identical to the ones defined in the structure of future teachers’ first foreign language phonetic competence. The received results become clear evidence of the fact that the future teachers’ level of interiorized professional phonetic competence at the beginning of studying English at university is not sufficient, thus, it requires further systematic development. Considering the German language a possible means of enhancing students’ English pronunciation acquisition, the author uses two variants of methods. Variant A takes into account their phonetic knowledge and subskills in their native and first foreign languages, which becomes the base for forming and developing their professional phonetic competence in English. This presupposes the use of activities which along with English speech units include those of the native and German languages. The students identify the features which are identical to their English equivalents and are encouraged to transfer the subskills of their pronunciation from German or a native language into English. Variant B involves future teachers’ experience of acquiring only their native language. The experimental teaching is followed by a post-experimental test, whose results in contrast with the ones received at the beginning of the experiment show the effectiveness of the both variants of methods. However, the comparison of the average increase indices in the level of professional phonetic competence components proves the expediency of applying Variant A of methods in the process of teaching the pronunciation of English after German.