Abstract:

The article discusses the concept of communicative competence and its components, offers ways to integrate English fairy tales into English lessons including role-playing games, dramatization and other forms of active learning.

The general aim of the research was to compile a study material for teaching English as a foreign language with the help of fairy tales in the 6th form of the secondary school. The aim of the study material was to identify possible ways to include English fairy tales in the educational process to develop communicative competence, enlarge pupils’ vocabulary skills, improve their grammar, reading skills, speaking skills and provide topics for discussions about values given in the fairy tales.

Before compiling the study material, the necessity analysis was conducted among English teachers in order to investigate teachers’ interest in the usage of fairy tales in English classes and to find out what kind of skills fairy tales might help to develop. The questionnaire of necessity analysis helped to get to know what kind of texts and exercises the author should include into the study material.

The theoretical basis of the work was the Jungle book by Rudyard Kipling. It was used in English lessons as a means of developing pupils' communicative competence. Diagnostics of the level of development of communicative competence was carried out according to 3 criteria: reproductive, productive, creative. The pedagogical experiment included 3 stages: ascertaining, formative, control. As a result of the experiment, significant conclusions were obtained. In general, the level of development of communication skills increased by 36% per 6 months of training as part of the experiment. Thus, general level of English proficiency in the experimental group increased by 20% compared to the first half of the year.

The author emphasizes the most important tasks that fairy tales provide with the usage of a common language, cultural literacy and cross cultural boundaries. Using the fairy tales at foreign language lessons leads to creating a favorable psychological atmosphere. It is therefore very important that lessons with fairy tales are unusual, funny and long-awaited activities. Fairy tales create a favorable atmosphere for effective mastering of the educational material, the work of students in the team and independently, develops the skills of foreign language communication, and also contributes to the mental and psychological development of the child. The high potential of English fairy tales in pupil motivating is emphasized.

The study’s novelty lies in the combination of communicative and linguistic-cultural approaches to foreign language teaching, which meets current trends in pedagogy. The study demonstrates the high potential of using English fairy tales to develop students' communication skills. The author comes to the conclusion that fairy tales introduce the peculiarities of the national culture and mentality, contain an extensive lexical and grammatical material, provide the basis for creation of various exercises.

Keywords:

Сommunicative competence, communication skills, modern educational methods, English language teaching, English fairy tale.