Motivational potential of using the social-game model in teaching a foreign language

Abstract

Updating language education in Russia today requires implementing the newest and most efficient pedagogic techniques in teaching process. The main trait of these techniques is the presence of a means-and-methods package of enacting theory-based teaching process that allows one to accomplish targeted teaching objectives. It is connected with the transition to communication-oriented teaching of foreign languages, which indicates a change of modern paradigm in teaching of foreign languages. It is not merely a foreign language itself along with its expressive means, but also the speaker's behavior under the conditions of actual communication that become the subject of teaching within the framework of this paradigm. Moreover, a principally different approach to teaching of foreign languages in higher education institutions is needed to implement major changes in the entire educational system, due to constant demand of specialists that actually have a good command of foreign languages. That is why motivational setting of learning also changes when students want to master at least one foreign language as a communication means and as a means of studying other cultures. Therefore, the main goal of education is to provide students with efficient command of a foreign language as a means of creation and formulation of ideas in the sphere of daily casual and professional communication. It means that a speaker's behavior under the conditions of actual communication is understood today firstly as animated and activity-oriented realization of lingual, psychological and social-cultural knowledge that is necessary for communicating in a foreign language. Thus, the following aspects of the problem are reviewed in the article: capabilities of motivation in learning a foreign language; using the social-game model as an educating device; pedagogical potential of the social-game model as an educational resource; possibilities of forming communicative and social skills in teaching a foreign language and etc.