ФОРМИРОВАНИЕ ПОЗНАВАТЕЛЬНОГО ИНТЕРЕСА НА УРОКАХ АНГЛИЙСКОГО ЯЗЫКА В НАЧАЛЬНЫХ КЛАССАХ: ТЕХНОЛОГИИ, МЕТОДЫ, ПРИЕМЫ

Introduction. An important task of teaching a foreign language in a modern school is a comprehensive and harmonious development of the personality of a learner capable and willing to participate in intercultural interaction. Motivation is, at the same time, one of the main tools of the learning process. In order to form it, it is necessary to create adequate conditions for the manifestation of internal motives for learning and make sure that students themselves are aware of the purpose of further personal development of the motivational sphere.

It is obvious that the use of modern pedagogical technologies helps to take into account all the constructive conditions for increasing cognitive interest and positive motivation for studying a particular subject. In this regard, the role of didactic and technological methods and techniques increases; they must be used with a specific goal, accompanied by clearly formulated and understood tasks [1, p.248], [2, p.139], [4, p.52].

The purpose of this study is to consider the increase in the cognitive interest of primary school students through the use of modern pedagogical technologies.

In order to achieve this goal, it is necessary to solve the problems associated with describing the practical application of pedagogical technologies that take into account the age characteristics of students in English teaching, their abilities and interests, namely: gaming technologies, technology of project training, technology of problem-based learning, ICT technologies and health-saving technologies.

Methods. While working on the stated topic, we used such methods as: Analysis of literature on the study of the formation of cognitive interest of primary school students and the application of modern pedagogical technologies at foreign language lessons, as well as methods of observation, study and generalization of pedagogical experience.

Discussion. Gaming technology is one of the most valuable technologies among the teacher’s tools. It takes an important place in organizing a foreign language lesson, fully satisfying the age requirements of this category of students.

It should be noted that the educational effectiveness of gaming techniques depends, first of all, on their systematic and purposeful use in combination with the usual didactic tasks and exercises.

The variety and quantitative composition of the games is a known difficulty for an English teacher, so it is necessary to approach the issue of their selection and application carefully. Classified according to certain attributes, properties and features, gaming activities entirely depend on the target setting.

For example, the activity form of gaming interaction implies the possibility of using various board games you can make with your own hands. You can use the game “Roll and Play” for this purpose. To conduct it, you will need a cube with multi-colored sides and a set of cards with tasks also divided into colour groups corresponding to the planes of the cube. The exercise to perform depends on the colour dropout. Throwing a cube, a student says the colour in English and performs what is indicated on the card. For example: Make a happy face, find a star, or walk like a bear. The undoubted advantage of this game is that the learning tasks can change depending on the studied grammar and lexical units.

Due to the age characteristics, primary school students need to move a lot. Action games allow combining active movement and lesson activities. They create favourable conditions not only for physical activity, but also contribute to the solution of educational problems, which enables consolidation and brings speech patterns to automatism. The following games can serve as an example: “The Wolf and the Hares,” “Edible – Inedible,” “Monkey Sees, Monkey does” and many others.

Pedagogical technology of project teaching is one of the most modern and popular technologies among teachers of a foreign language and methodologists. It includes a set of research, searching, problem methods; it is creative in its expression and is aimed at forming active reflection among the project participants, critical attitude to learning activity, desire to seek and find new knowledge through skills and to apply them in the practical plane [3, p. 8].

At the initial stage of teaching English, educational projects, are most often short-term from the point of view of time duration. From the point of view of activity type they are usually creative or playful, which is determined by the age characteristics of primary school students. Note that any educational activity during this period is of a learning character. The main task of the teacher is the formation of basic skills of project planning, namely – the development of the ability to plan their activities and implement them in accordance with the draft plan.

The project method can be used in the course of time under the training material of almost any of the program topics. The main thing is to formulate a problem the students will work with. Thematic variety of projects is quite wide, even for the initial stage of education, for example: “Healthy Food,” “My Favorite Holiday,” “My Family,” “The City of My Dream,” “It's Delicious!,” “My Pet” and others.

The technology of problem training can be used at all stages of teaching English, including the primary level. Relying on the age and individual characteristics of students, the ability to create problem situations and solve them are the key principles of the method, where cognitive and motivational components are considered to be one of the leading ones.

Using a problem situation in the classroom, a teacher needs to raise the question in such a way as to exclude the attempt to answer with the help of a ready-made response. Its content should require the concentration of attention, independent thinking and creative mobilization.

Solving various problematic tasks, moving into a communicative field, students learn to interact with each other, find common ground with their peers and the teacher. Problem solving technologies allow creating a new and previously unknown atmosphere at the lesson. In addition, this technology opens up opportunities for the formation of research competence, which pushes students to the understanding of learning feasibility.

It is generally recognized that information and communication technologies (ICT) help to effectively develop the skills of communicative competence, ensure active involvement in the educational process as well as adapt its participants to modern conditions of social interaction. It is impossible to imagine a lesson of English without the use of new technological information and communication tools.

An important place in the activity is given to multimedia products. Note that multimedia technology is a technology that characterizes the way information is presented in the form of a combination of sounds, video, photos, etc.

With appropriate equipment, and namely a projector, a computer and corresponding software, the most common multimedia type, a presentation, has almost unlimited graphic and colour capabilities, which allows presenting any material in the form of animations, colourful pictures, charts, graphs and diagrams, everything that arouses keen interest of the students, contributing to a better perception and qualitative assimilation of the educational material. For example, when learning new lexical units, pictures and animations shown on the screen allow you to associate a phrase or a word in English with an object or an  action based on visual memory.

It is possible to organize various educational and methodical games to better remember or revise previously learnt material with the help of multimedia presentations, thus combining different types of pedagogical technologies. To make the learning process cognitive and technological at the same time we can use computer training programs, such as flashcard games, which are as a rule aimed at memorizing lexical units and grammatical constructions.

At the same time, when using a computer and a projector, a smart board and gadgets, it is necessary to remember that these technical means can negatively influence the health of students when applied for a long time. Therefore, a teacher should know that the duration of continuous work with the computer and the projection screen for primary school students should not exceed 15 minutes, in addition, the projection screen, smart installation should be at a distance of 1.1-1.5 m from the centre of technical devices to the floor level.

With proper observance of these health-saving requirements, the use of ICT contributes to the formation of the students’ language competence, while the learning activity acquires modern forms, which affects the level of motivation and maintenance of interest in the subject.

A modern lesson of the English language requires a lot of effort and attention on behalf of primary school students – rapid fatigue leads to a decrease in cognitive activity in the study of the subject. The efficiency and effectiveness of a lesson in this regard is ensured by a change in activities that occurs every seven to ten minutes, due to a variety of methods, forms and techniques, so the role of health-saving technologies is quite big nowadays.

When planning a lesson, it is necessary to include various types of relaxation techniques: Physical training, action games, respiratory and eye gymnastics. It is possible to organize physical culture and health-improving exercises in different ways – using rhythmic poems on different topics, video fragments, songs and rhymes.

Given in a certain rhythm, small poems are an effective means of relieving physical and emotional stress. Simple sentences, combined with easily perceived rhyme can be quickly remembered even by the students with a sufficiently low level of linguistic competence, auditory-pronunciation and other skills. During physical activities, a teacher needs to clearly show the movements and correctly pronounce all the sounds and words, and in order to increase the cognitive interest on the part of the trainees, it is recommended to change rhymes used during the physical activity.

The use of rhythmic poems in class is also justified; they allow not only relieving the tension, but also consolidating lexical and grammatical material. Therefore, preparation for the lesson is a complex process where each activity takes into account all the positive aspects of the other. So, for example, a bright, colourful video clip with easily memorable words, which causes genuine interest among primary school students, is an excellent tool for relieving psychological and physical stress.

Carrying out respiratory gymnastics helps to raise the excitability of the cortex of the cerebral hemispheres and activate mental activity. A good example of this is the breathing exercise called “Balloon.” While explaining the rules, the teacher asks students to imagine that they are all balloons: “You are the balloons.” When he asks students to “Breath in” they take a deep breath and hold it. Then the teacher says: “Breath out” and the participants of the game slowly exhale.

Health-saving exercises include eye gymnastics, which can be carried out using moving objects. This complex of energetic activities is supplemented with verses, words, rhymes, tongue twisters, etc. One of the successful ways to reach eye relaxation is the so-called video-gymnastics – the trainees watch the sea waves and jumping dolphins, falling leaves, etc.

Results. Analyzing and summarizing the pedagogical experience of the authors of this study, we can state that different game forms used at the lesson allow qualitatively diversifying the learning process of the English language, make it interesting and fascinating, since games are, in fact, a natural environment of primary school students. Therefore, gaming technologies have obvious advantages for the further activation and formation of persistent cognitive interest among students.

As for project activities, it is worth noting that participation in the project work significantly expands the educational horizons of students and sustains cognitive interest, while the process of communication during discussions of topical problems becomes natural and in demand. Problem technologies develop creative abilities and critical thinking; form the motivation for the studied subject among students of different age groups, including primary school students.

The use of information and communication technologies significantly increases interest in the subject, while health-saving technologies enable arranging a lesson activity in such a way that its participants do not get tired and the productivity of the educational work increases.

Conclusion. Therefore, the use of modern pedagogical technologies at English classes in primary school undoubtedly has a direct impact on raising the cognitive interest of students.