Current trends in the development of interactive methods in teaching foreign languages

Abstract

The subject of research covered in this paper is a method of teaching a foreign language as a means of enhancing students’ cognitive activity as well as development of their creative and intellectual abilities. The interactive method of teaching is observed as a form of the cognitive activity reflecting relevant phenomena of the modern reality. The paper is mainly focused on the methodology of conducting classes using such an interactive teaching method as a language game in order to develop lexical, grammatical and phonetic competence of students. The potential of a language game as an interactive teaching method (communicative approach) is demonstrated through studying headlines of French newspapers in the context of teaching the French language to linguistic students. Various interpretations of the “language game” concept have been compiled on the basis of up-to-date academic literature. Several levels of language game comprehension and translation are analyzed including the following ones: word-formation, idiomatic and phonetic. Examples of newspaper headlines are provided in order to scrutinize lexical and stylistic figures of speech (e.g. personification, metaphor, comparison, oxymoron, pun) as well as set expressions and syntactic constructions. Methodological guidelines for applying a language game as an interactive teaching method are offered. The paper is aimed at teachers of higher professional education institutions.