Abstract:

Thinking activity reinforcement in the educational process meets the requirements of a modern model of an educational process, which focuses on the transition from the "school of knowledge" to the "school of thought" and is a fundamentally new stage in the development of methodology and psychology of teaching foreign languages.

The authors of this paper consider speech production as an important factor in the personality actualization that defines psychological, speech and behavioral activity of the person. A foreign language is a study subject in which we can observe the whole range of personality psychological characteristic: thought, speech, communication, memory, attention, emotions. It is the matter of common knowledge that language and speech are the essential conditions for the development of human thought and knowledge. W. Humboldt believed that people do not master the language, it is the language that seizes people. It means that language affects the development of human thinking. This understanding was the starting point for the creation of linguistic relativity theory connected with the names of L. Weisgerber, E. Sapir and B. Whorf. This interest was also one of the causes of cognitive linguistics formation in the 70s of the 20th century. The debate between supporters and opponents of this theory is still going on.

Nowadays it is questionable that the only objective of the process of foreign language teaching is to master the language as a set of tools serving communication needs or as just a formal sign system. Today speech activity theory and personal-psychological approach to learning a foreign language have become relevant. Under such conditions psychological and didactic basis of foreign language teaching consists of three interrelated principles: communicative, cognitive, personal-oriented.

Active methods make it possible to create knowledge and professional competence by involving students into active learning cognitive activity, thus enabling them to go beyond their individual experience and encouraging their willingness to perceive and create new information.

The theory of active learning relies on both a set of basic principles of education and specific psycho-pedagogical principles (A.A. Verbitsky, 1987): simulation method; problem method; the principle of joint activity; method of dialogic communication; bilateral approach.
The analysis of teaching methods in accordance with the selected principles suggests that communicative (communication in a foreign language), cognitive (new picture of the world acquisition) and personal (individual self-realization) principles underlie thinking activity reinforcement in the process of foreign language learning.

The realization of the suggested methods in foreign language teaching involves the training intensification, which means, firstly, the establishment of the most favorable conditions in the learning process; secondly, the intensification of individual student’s educational activity; third, the intensification of training activity within collective psychological conditions (group learning, which provides better conditions for a each individual student).

The authors suggest that collective activities in foreign language acquisition expand the possibilities and resources for thinking activity reinforcement.

Keywords:

Foreign language, teaching, speech production, thinking activity reinforcement, personal-psychological approach.