Abstract:

Education technology is a system of influences on the trainee in the training process. It involves the management of didactic process with the inclusion of stages of the trainees' activities organization and control. A technology represents a theoretical pedagogical project of educational activity management. The problem of educational technologies efficiency is connected with the problem of strategies of representing, acquisition, storing, reproducing, and actualization of various forms of the educational information. This paper considers audio-visual technologies (AT) for foreign languages training in high school. It reports on a number of audio-visual activities conducted in foreign languages training at Southern Federal University, Russia. Audio-visual activities are considered as using video in training and making video as a process of foreign language communication. If you want students to practice descriptive language, making video is an exploratory, personal, and real way of doing it. In this type of activity, people are saying important things to themselves and each other via the camera. The research provides some ideas of the students’ perception of video in education process. Video in foreign languages training allows the teacher to discover the live and functioning language world for students. The difference of video use in education process depends on a type of audio-visual material in training foreign languages. The classification of video materials (video courses, video films, video information) allows to consider different pedagogical and didactic conditions of AT realization. The functional features of a video film in training process and four stages of audio-visual education technology based on a video film were described. To present the process of training the pedagogical algorithms based on the structure of the knowledge acquisition process were developed according to the aims of viewing (illustrative viewing, fact-finding, studying, critical, and search viewing). The stages of AT realization are defined as previewing, presentation, after-viewing, and actualization.

An educational intervention using AT was developed and we investigated:
(1) its effectiveness as a teaching method, and
(2) the degree of knowledge acquisition of the language content proposed to students.

The aim of the foreign language training was to form and to develop the foreign language communicative competence that includes different skills, abilities and knowledge of grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, etc. It includes skills in reading, writing, audition and speaking. For the communicative competence level estimation, we use calculation of knowledge acquisition factor of training material.

Forty-nine residents were divided into an intervention group and a control group. The residents in the intervention group had the training process based on AT. The control group had a traditional training process organization. Special tests and questionnaires were used to measure knowledge acquisition. A significant improvement was observed in acquired knowledge of foreign language and AT were perceived to be effective in teaching foreign languages. AT were perceived to facilitate residents’ knowledge acquisition and stimulate active learning. Foreign language training based on AT positively influence residents’ performance and should play leading roles in the effective communicative competence formation and development.

Keywords:

Audio-visual technologies, foreign languages teaching, higher education, pedagogics, pedagogical algorithms, techniques of teaching, technologies of education,