Abstract:

The research deals with the problem of enhancing students’ foreign language speech skills through the analysis of their communicative intentions and strategies. A communicative intention is seen as the aim of an utterance; it is the speaker’s wish to get a certain result with the help of the utterance. An intention reflects needs, motives and thoughts of a speaker. To materialize some communicative intention the speaker follows a certain strategy and uses definite tactical maneuvers. The classification of communicative intentions into several groups is pointed out: to inform (a narration, an account of events), to depict (a description), to compare / to sum up (explanation), to prove / to dispose (argumentation), to encourage (an instruction). Any utterance expresses one of the intentions mentioned above.

The object of our research is the process of teaching first-year students English speech through conversational gambits and formulas, through introducing a compositional pattern of a dialogue or monologue depending on the communicative intention, for example, a persuasion will contain a sequence of arguments and objections, counterarguments and contradictions, arrangements or disagreements. A classification of conversational clichés according to the strategy of communication is described in the article. Thus, there is an attempt to make an algorithm of teaching foreign speech. The algorithm is based on the major principle of the communicative method: the process of learning re-edifies the process of real communication, with learning being simplified in some aspects.

Keywords:

Communicative intentions, communicative strategies, speech skills, enhancing speech skills.