Abstract:

In recent decades, communicative learning objectives have been the major ones at a linguistic pedagogical university since the future professional activity of a language teacher is connected with practical language usage. Consequently, the formation and improvement of students’ oral speech skills serve as a priority task of studying at a university.

The paper proves that teaching oral speech skills in a foreign language should be based on the work with an authentic text. Educationally the text performs several functions, which contribute to fast development of speech skills. First of all, the text contains some language and verbal means used by native speakers in everyday communication; besides, it acts as a model for students to build up their own monologues; moreover, it is a source of socially significant and culturally specific information. Thus, a literary text discussion develops students’ communicative culture, improves their way of thinking, broadens their horizons and enriches their vocabulary.

The aim of this work is to develop a set of exercises for students’ oral speech skills perfection via the use of an authentic literary text, which ensures the solution of urgent problems of communication in a foreign language in the course of intercultural communication.

The paper shows that teaching the speech form of "reasoning" will contribute to students’ high level oral speech skills, whereas the works of fiction appears to be the background and the source for “reasoning”, since they contain a great variety of themes and challenges understandable by and close to students. Works of art provide ample opportunities for teaching how to use “argumentation”, namely presentation, justification and defense of one’s point of view.

The set of exercises developed by the authors is a system of tasks aimed at the formation of three types of skills: receptive (work with the text), reproductive (retelling) and productive (constructing a monologue). Each following unit of exercises adds to the previous one and complicates the tasks of mental activity, which indicates their continuity and consistency. Starting to work on understanding a literary text, students, in the course of completing sets of exercises, will gradually be ready not only to convey its content, but analyze the actions of characters, their motives and attitudes.

Thus, the discussion of what has been read presents a highly efficient form of oral speech skills development. The paper demonstrates a number of advantages of this component of educational activity in comparison with the others and confirms its importance for the effective formation of students’ oral speech skills at an advanced stage at the university.

Keywords:

Oral speech skills, authentic literary text, advanced stage of teaching, the development of thinking, increasing complexity of the language, argumentation.