УДК 37

Social media: a tool to boost would-be english teachers’ lexical competence

Санферова Ирина Алексеевна – магистрантка Московского городского университета

Казанцева Анжела Анатольевна – кандидат педагогических наук, доцент Московского городского университет, Россия, Москва

Abstract: The paper deals with the ways how to develop lexical competence in would-be English teachers’ via social media VKontakte. Definitions of lexical competence, modern technologies and social media are analysed. In addition, the technology of using the social network Vkontakte as a tool to boost would-be English teachers' lexical competence is considered. The social network VKontakte to be the productive means for education and self-education in teaching English.

Keywords: would-be English teachers training, technology lexical competence developing, professional communicative competence, social media, educational blog.

Nowadays the world is developing rapidly in particilar new technologies appear. Every sphere of our life is progressing, and the field of education is one of them. The 2020, the year of the coronavirus, brought huge changes in our life, including traditional education. According to A. L. Berdichevsky, at the present stage of language education development, the angle of view on the profession of a foreign language teacher is changing [1, p.11]. More attention is paid to the cultural dialogue, to the development of a linguistic personality capable of participating in such a dialogue. The emergence of the need to comprehend problematic, conflict situations of cross-cultural communication in the course of foreign language teaching.

The priority goal of modern foreign language education is the way to form the student's secondary linguistic personality with cross-cultural communicative competence. Firstly, it implies the development of "dialogicality" of the student's cognitive consciousness: it appropriates a different picture of the world and simultaneously enriches its own, and, secondly, it provides the ability and learner’s readiness to communicate on a cross-cultural level [3, p. 75]. The lexical component is the building material of cross-cultural communicative competence, that is why students need to develop lexical competence, because it is hardly possible to form cross-cultural communicative competence without a full command of vocabulary.

Lexical competence is one of the tasks of training a would-be foreign language teacher and one of the most important components of his/her professional competence. Knowledge of the vocabulary composition of the target language, the ability to choose words and word combinations in accordance with the communicative intention, and significantly their active use in foreign-language speech are among the main tasks in teaching the lexical side of speech in modern education.

Е. N. Solovova notes that lexical competence is the knowledge of the vocabulary of the language, including lexical elements, and the ability to use them in speech. Lexical elements include words, regular word messages, stable combinations (phrasal verbs), complex prepositions, phraseological units [3, p. 51]. Students' lack of knowledge of words can lead to erroneous communication, as they will not be able to convey what they want to express while speaking or writing. This can be overcome by systematic improvement of lexical competence, which will contribute to improving general communicative competence, since a rich vocabulary facilitates such types of speech activities as listening, speaking, reading and writing, contributing to effective and successful communication.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, schools and higher education institutions have had to switch to distance learning, which is based on the use of various digital tools and resources. Modern schools are evolving and every year try to come up with newer and more interesting methods of teaching a foreign language.

The use of modern technologies opens up a vast array of possibilities of electronic resources in English language teaching, which have a great number of advantages over traditional teaching methods. They help to present the material to students in a more modern and visual way. One of such means is social networks, the use of which in the process of developing students' lexical competence will contribute to the effectiveness due to the richness, interesting and informal learning environment. According to the sociocultural sphere of the foreign language teacher's communicative activity involves studying the changes taking place in Internet communication in the language the educator teaches, comprehending these changes in the so-called Netspeak (D. Crystal) – a language that has unique lexical and discursive functions in the Internet space, classifying the relevant language and speech units [1, p. 11].

Thus, the rapid evolution of technology favours the birth of fast-growing social networking tools, which are increasingly used by pupils and students in social and academic settings. Interactive tools are powerful motivators for students and contribute to the development of various professionally relevant skills such as academic writing, research skills, professional communication formats, where students are involved in the profession, its problems and prospects as early as possible through communication with peers and professors [6, p. 12]. The potential and peculiarities of social media use can be explained by its accessibility and speed of information transfer.

Social networks are able to quickly instil the memories of specific lexical units and use them in an informal setting, because learners get a unique opportunity to specify and use their lexical skills in the Internet space, in particular, in the social network "VKontakte". The main purpose of using social networks in the educational process is to help students develop communicative communication skills and improve lexico-grammatical skills [2, p. 1-2].

The social media VKontakte has exactly those functions that can be used to successfully develop lexical competence: the possibile polls in the format of choosing one answer and polls with open-ended answers, as well as commenting on posts and discussing topics of interest. The teacher can also create an educational blog in the social midea VKontakte. Based on this, it is important to mention how exactly a blog can be reply for educational purposes during the development of students' lexical competence. An educational blog is characterized by the range not only textual material, but also attached pictures, audio and video materials, as well as links to additional sources of information.

Thus, speaking about the social network "VKontakte" and its potential in the development of lexical competence we can highlight following: a more detailed analysis of the studied informational sources and the development of using language as a means of education and self-education. By using this social network it is possible to develop all types of speech activity, especially to improve lexico-grammatical skills. Also, it allows students to encounter and practice both formal type of communication and informal. On this basis, students will be able to plunge into a foreign language environment and improve a foreign language in all its diversity.

References

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