Abstract:

The paper will present an author’s method of teaching foreign languages Future Learning System, which is based on the latest achievements in neuroglottodidactics, constructivist didactics of foreign languages as well as humanistic nondirective pedagogy underlining the needs of a learner, his/her interests and autonomy. FLS is an integrated approach to a holistic foreign language teaching enabling a proper individualization of teaching techniques, in accordance with learners’ needs, interests and expectations, which is extremely important especially when teaching adult learners. FLS is a method based mainly on creative drama fully using the learner’s potential, his/her personality and individual preferences for learning, developing all types of intelligence and integrating both brain hemispheres. Drama makes learners deal with different daily-life problems, events and relationships in an fictional situational context. Drama makes learning a language more effective and “brain friendly”. Students are making sense of the world around them through acting and reacting real and imagined experiences. They are verbalizing in make believe worlds, generating, rehearsing and practising the language required in a safe fictional context. They are also experiencing the emotional thrill of role play “as if”. Students’ dramatic play stimulates and uses many different parts of the brain, just as drama does simultaneously exciting visual, auditory, spatial and motor functions. In drama there is a safe and distanced opportunity to recognize and talk about emotions together developing a target language. Emotional competence has a 'feel-good' factor, which is intrinsically motivating. Drama involves a significant focus on reading non-verbal messages and portraying and communicating them through gesture, eye-contact, movement, positioning and so forth. The non -verbal and verbal messages are juxtaposed for greater clarity of meaning. Verbal behaviours are also better recognised and developed as drama relies on and develops active listening and response. It supports and gives it for inference and the understanding of sub-text and the meaning lying behind spoken and written words.

The paper will present the results of the research on an author’s method of teaching foreign languages. It will briefly point to psychological conditions of the process of language acquisition, paying special attention to selected learner’s personality features and motivation. The assumptions of the author’s FLS method of teaching foreign languages, its theoretical foundations, and practical implications will be presented. The second part of presentation will focus on the author’s research results obtained as a result of the experiment conducted. The research was carried out basing on the sample of 244 students with the use of various analytical methods and strategies. The very work is an attempt to look at the process of teaching and learning a foreign language differently, from the perspective of neurodidactics, neurology and latest achievements in psychopedagogy Drama, constituting the basis of the FLS method in question, activates all types of intelligence and both brain hemispheres, integrating and synchronizing all personality spheres of a learner. Thus, a foreign language is acquired in a natural way through unconscious immersion, even in the case of adults having their own habits, mental blockages and fears.