Some methodological techniques for teaching oral speech in Chinese

Kartaleva Anastasiia Sergeevna Postgraduate student, Moscow State Pedagogical University; Educator, the department of Foreign Language Competence, Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation 125993, Russia, Moskovskaya oblast', g. Moscow, ul. Leningradskii Prosp., 49 ASKartaleva@fa.ru Other publications by this author

Before starting the study, a task was set containing the identification of existing problems among university students during the study of oral foreign language speech.  In the course of research activities, the main problem of the article was studied in detail and considered, which is due to the formation of speaking skills in Chinese. The subjects were 1st-year students of the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation studying Chinese as a second foreign language.

Speaking about speaking skills, many researchers (Bukicheva, O. A., Lingxin Yao, Zhang Pengpeng) emphasize that this aspect in teaching a foreign language is one of the most important.  This explains many facts, so Bukicheva, O. A. determines that the purpose of studying oral speech is the ability of students to carry out foreign-language interpersonal and intercultural communication with native speakers ^[1]. Which, in turn, suggests that the purpose of teaching oral speech can improve students' oral communication skills, lay the foundations for the ability to coherently and logically express their thoughts ^[6]. Thus, it should be started already at the initial stages of training (during the first classes).  

According to O. A. Maslovets, the following motivational problems should be attributed to the main difficulties of learning to speak: 

– students are embarrassed to speak Chinese, afraid of making mistakes, being criticized; 

– students do not understand the speech task; 

– students do not have enough language and speech resources to solve the task;

– students do not maintain the required amount of the duration of communication in Chinese ^{[6, pp. 100-101]}.

Despite the fact that the scientific and methodological literature contains a detailed description of the theoretical foundations and methodological techniques for the formation of speaking skills in a foreign language, these techniques have not been widely used in the practical training of students studying Chinese. 

In this connection, the relevance of works devoted to the description of practical methodological developments based on the systematization of traditional and non-traditional forms of organization of educational activities arises. We propose to consider the following practical developments that contribute to the development of speaking skills in Chinese.

One of the problems of students at the first stages of learning Chinese is insufficient vocabulary. Although its extension is not the core of basic learning, but it is among the irreplaceable and important, since it is with it that the study of the lexical aspect often begins ^[3]. 

The initial stage should be focused on significant words of household topics. At the same time, the main attention should be paid to the training of speech patterns, which helps to move to the full mastery of the lexical unit ^[10].

In a narrow sense, the initial stage of learning a foreign language is understood as learning that takes place at the beginning of language learning in a secondary school. However, in the context of this article, this concept implies "primary" classes, language learning without any skills. This stage is characterized by relative incompleteness, openness of goals, content, forms and methods of teaching.

Teaching the lexical aspect should be aimed at developing the student's communicative competence, which ensures speech activity. When introducing speech samples, it is necessary to work out not only memorization and its use in the same situation, but also to teach the student to use them in different life situations.  

When teaching vocabulary, the introduction of new words according to a special scheme is practiced, as well as the use of lexical and grammatical tables.

The scheme of introducing new lexical units of the Chinese language should include the following elements: morphemic analysis, explanation of the meaning of a word or a separate-merged phrase, introduction of antonyms and synonyms, comparison with similar words, stable expressions, as well as examples of the use of the word. 

This approach is implemented in several stages, here is an example:

The phrase – go to class, the beginning of the lesson. 

At the first stage, it is necessary to determine the meaning of each morpheme: ? – on, upper; ?– lesson, while for a more effective result, students are invited to compile several examples using this morpheme (we can meet in the evening, in the evening). It is also worth paying attention to other ways of using it: ? – getting into the car, - the previous one. Next, the teacher needs to consider antonyms, in this case –at the bottom, under, and give similar examples ( – finish the lesson, – get out of the car). At the second stage, it is necessary to determine the value of ? "lesson". It consists of the graphemes "speech" and "fruit", and also has several counting words: ?,?,?. At the same time, these morphemes could have occurred to students earlier, so it's worth mentioning. For example, ? has the meaning "door", and ? occurs in - dining room. At the last stage, students should give examples of already studied words: - attend a Chinese language class,how many lessons do you have?,what time do you start classes?, etc.

When explaining a new vocabulary, it is useful to introduce synonyms, while it is necessary to clearly show the difference in their use. For example, in the topic "time", two similar words are often given: "time" and "time", both are translated as "morning", but it should be noted that "time" is the early morning, and "time" is the later part of the first half of the day. At the same time, ? is often used in the meaning of "good morning", and and sound more formal.

Lexical and grammatical tables should be used to develop the lexical stock. They can be presented as a list of additional words or expressions on a specific topic. Modern technologies allow you to quickly and easily create similar tables in free applications for learning foreign languages, such as: Quizlet (https://quizlet.com ), Memrise (https://www.memrise.com/ru /). In these applications, there is not only support for the Chinese language, but also many other tools for memorizing and practicing words. Also, when new words are entered into the tables, their transcription and voiceover are automatically added. Such sentences help to overcome the fear of speaking, combine new words with those already learned, teach them to calmly react to their own mistakes, as well as to look for new forms of expression of thought that help to further improve dialogic and monologue speech. 

Making lists together with students also helps to strengthen the friendly atmosphere in the group. An example of the list on the Quizlet website can be viewed at the link: https://quizlet.com/_9pteon?x=1jqt&i=2fh894 or in Figure 1. 

Fig. 1. List of phrases on the topic "Career"

Another type of lexical and grammatical table can be a table with substitutions. Several grammatical models and basic lexical units on the chosen topic are introduced here. Thus, students are offered more diverse situations of using words that have already been studied and speech components that have not been encountered before (see Figure 2). 

Fig. 2. Reference table on the topic (journey)For better working out and memorizing lexical units, with their subsequent application in oral speech, an exercise aimed at interpretation is used.

The main criterion for the construction of this task is a gradual transition from simple to more complex.  This type of exercise should be used at the stage of actualization or at the stage of reflection. To do this, the following execution algorithm is used: 

1. Repetition of the token;

2. The teacher's compilation of phrases or simple sentences with this lexeme in Russian, with the addition of new elements;

3. Translation of students into Chinese previously voiced by the teacher of phrases or simple sentences. 

Speaking of sentences, they should acquire a more complex grammatical structure each time, where later students need to translate an already logically completed utterance.

 Here is an example of a similar chain: shop — that store — go to that store — Where are you going? — I'm going to that store. — bookstore — go to the bookstore — go to that bookstore — Why are you going to the store? — I'm going to the bookstore to buy a textbook on the Chinese language.  — Who are you going to the bookstore with? — I'm going to the bookstore with my sister. — Who are you buying a Chinese textbook for? — I'm buying a Chinese textbook for my friend. — to work in a store — to work in that store — I don't want to work in a store. — I want to work in that store. — My sister's husband does not work in that store, he works in a bank. — Who does my sister's husband work for? — He's a bank employee. — My sister's husband is not a bank director, he is a bank employee. — Now my friend and I are going to that bookstore to buy my sister a textbook on the Chinese language. She asked her husband to buy, but he does not have time to go to the bookstore, he is very busy at work – he is a bank employee.These statements for translation are offered to each student in turn.

If the student makes a mistake or finds it difficult to answer, then the sentence goes to the next one. This aspect helps to maintain the rhythm of the lesson. To control the concentration of attention of other listeners, it is recommended to follow the order of the answers randomly.

At the initial stage of language learning, it is important to pay special attention to learning to read. Some experts believe that the method of recitation is primitive and not particularly effective ^[8], but, in our opinion, it is not without benefit. The introduction of control reading in first-year classes helps students learn to pay attention to tones, which contributes to their memorization (the importance of tones is the most common problem for Chinese language learners) ^[7]. The main task of the teacher is to carefully and scrupulously correct tonal and intonation errors while students are reading. This aspect helps to lay the basic skills of oral speech at the very beginning of training. Also, reading aloud helps to better remember stable phrases and expressions with more complex grammatical structures. For example, “the supermarket is not far from the house, it takes 5 minutes to walk). In this sentence, students have problems related to the use of ?. This is due to the fact that there is no analogue of this word in Russian grammar. Also, Chinese dictionaries give many definitions and examples of its use, which only exacerbates the problem. Thus, it is recommended that the student simply memorize this phrase with?. Based on this, we see that reading texts helps to assimilate such grammatical constructions in context.

The development of productive monologue speech at the initial stage of training is considered by many scientists to be inappropriate: "At the initial stage, students should master basic knowledge of the language system, units of speech at the levels of words, phrases, sentences (phrases), skills and abilities of reproductive monologue speech and elements of dialogic speech. The tasks of the middle stage of training (training with the available basic knowledge: letters, basic rules, the presence of a small vocabulary, etc.) should be to expand the speech base of students in the process of transition from reproductive monologue speech to productive, from prepared to unprepared" [4. p.40]. That is, it is believed that at the initial stage it is not recommended to introduce elements of productive monologue speech due to compositional complexity and strict adherence to grammatical rules, as well as a lack of vocabulary and speech experience among students. However, from our point of view, if the speech task is clearly and correctly defined, students can compose small answers that have a monological character, despite the limited language material. 

            We also suggest at the very beginning of the training to enter short messages on given topics, give situational tasks, teach students to perform simple speech tasks (message, explanation, approval, condemnation, persuasion). At the same time, tasks can be aimed at forming a monological utterance or problem-dialog communication. 

Below are several topics for monologue utterance:  (tell us about your daily routine); (tell us about your hobby), , (what is happiness for you?), ( ( (sports in my life). Topics for monologue statements should be relevant and interesting, as well as appeal to the feelings and experiences of students.

Problem-dialogic communication is characterized by the presence of a problem, ambiguity of positions, accessibility. The whole process of communication should be aimed at solving problems or searching for subjective truths. The teacher describes a situation (situational task) that students must beat in the form of a dialogue. 

Here is an example of a situational task: "   (Your friend's birthday is on Sunday. Discuss what gift you will give him? Who will go to the store to buy it? How much money do I need for a gift?). 

 Such exercises help to overcome the fear of speaking and mistakes, teach students to look for new forms of expression of thought, combine the new with the already learned.   

It is important to take into account that both types of speech activity are conducted exclusively in Chinese, therefore, even in the process of preparing for utterance, it is necessary to provide students with additional language tools in the form of thematic lists or lexico-grammatical tables. 

Oral language teaching is aimed to a large extent at the development of communication skills in the actual use of the language. A year of studying Chinese can help students to lay only a preliminary language foundation ^[2]. For this reason, during each lesson, it is necessary to devote time to the practice of dialogic speech. As an exercise, you can use the compilation of dialogues on the topic covered, the discussion of topics of interest to students, the performance of situational tasks in pairs or mini-groups. At the same time, the teacher needs to encourage students to use dictionaries to search for additional vocabulary.  

For a relatively long period of time, teaching oral speech in the target (in our case, Chinese) language requires two stages of transformation: 

1. The speaker's speech intention (mental language code) - the choice of words and sentence models in the native language; 

2. The choice of words and sentence models in the target language corresponding to the native language ^[5].

The task of oral speech lessons is to speed up the process of conversion between two languages.  It is necessary to gradually move from thinking and expressing in the native language to the combined use of the native and target language, and then to the use of only the target language ^[9]. The choice of topics for discussion can cause difficulties in oral language development classes, since the topics offered in textbooks are often unfamiliar (for example, Beijing opera, Chinese cinema or literature, going to the embassy, etc.) or simply uninteresting. Therefore, it is recommended to use simple topics related to the daily life of students and corresponding to the level of their language competencies: acquaintance, study, shopping, meetings, trips, etc. 

In addition to classroom practice, students can train their dialogic skills in simple life situations. Encourage students to make Chinese friends online (you can use the Tandem website (https://www.tandem.net )), and if there are students from China at the university, then in a dormitory or university club. Recommend to communicate more often in Chinese (for example, in restaurants of national cuisine, tourist places). 

An important condition for the successful development of oral speech skills is the creation of a comfortable learning environment, which requires a lot of experience and openness from the teacher. Joint implementation of situational and practical tasks or joint participation in university events help to create an atmosphere of friendship and cooperation in the classroom. For example, at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Chinese Language week is held annually as part of the Science Festival, the International Student Scientific Congress, where students participate in scientific discussions, round tables and creative workshops, including in Chinese.

Thus, we propose to overcome the difficulties of learning to speak by increasing the vocabulary, the formation of interpretation skills, the development of simple dialogic and monologue speech. 

Vocabulary training at the initial stage is built around everyday topics, as well as topics of interest to students. The introduction of new lexical units should consist of morphemic analysis and lots of examples that will help students not only to remember them better, but also to apply them in different communicative situations.

Vocabulary expansion is facilitated by lexico-grammatical lists and tables, which for convenience can be compiled in a mobile application by a teacher or by students themselves. 

Fluent translation from Russian into Chinese and vice versa is useful for practicing and memorizing new words, as well as for pronunciation training and overcoming the fear of speaking. 

Monologue speech at the initial stage of training, although considered difficult, is quite possible under the condition of a clearly defined speech task: the topics of discussion should be clear and relevant.  

Dialogic speech can be practiced in the form of dialogues and situational tasks performed in pairs or mini-groups. 

Creating a comfortable environment for teaching oral speech is an urgent task. 

The proposed methods of teaching speaking have been tested in practice, are easy to use, cause a positive response from students and help to achieve high results. 

This study is interesting from the point of view of practice and science, as it reveals many aspects of oral language teaching. In recent years, learning Chinese has been in great demand. This is due to the positive Russian-Chinese relations, which are still gaining momentum.  There are many confirming examples of cooperation between the two countries in the economic and political arena. Given these facts, it can be concluded that in the near future, specialists who speak spoken Chinese will be in great demand.

The identified problems of the formation of colloquial speech and ways to solve them can also be applied in the study of other foreign languages. The skill of fluency in any foreign language is useful not only during work or study, but also in everyday life.