If we think of Earth as of a House of over five hundred million square kilometres then its door's keys is a spoken in every separate room's language knowledge. Who would mind to have them? And like Frederico Fellini told once: 'Another language is a different vision of life'. About the way to open new spaces and different visions of life, about the way to yourself and your beloved job — Merem Biboletova, assistant professor of Foreign Language Department of Institute of General Secondary Education of the Russian Academy of Education, one of the developers of standard foreign languages education, author of the training kit 'Enjoy English'.
I wonder why it is stuck in my memory, that picture from my childhood. An ordinary day, nothing special, we are in a forest with my classmates. It's warm and nice. Me and my friend Sveta are thirteen, we put a mat under the oak tree and lie to chat. What it was about — talking, dreaming — I don't remember. But as clear as if it were today I see washed to the piercing blue color sky and fantastic heavy oak leaves crown on its perfect and endless background. We didn't read Lev Tolstoy by that moment and had no idea yet of passions a la Andrei Bolkonsky. I remember the carved leaves' swinging, being enlightened and my heart was pounding with happiness as if this tree I laid under was a root and I was one of its leaves and I understood what it whispered to the sun and the sky. Years passed but this day was like yesterday. May be because it was the beginning of my way to my fate. By that time being a teen I dreamt to be an art critic. My mother was an editor in a publishing house and translated books from Russian to Adige. Books were everywhere, my childhood was saturated with them. Besides of living in the world of books I saw and heard how they were made. It was as visible, as materialistic as the leaves of that tree and I was inside of this creation same as leaveslines. Thus little by little almost unconsciously appeared this yet unquenchable enchantment by word, language, this powerful tree, source of being and consciousness.
The intellect of children who know two or three languages develops in a special way. Nobody knows how this camera obscūra works but somehow bilinguals who have two parallels languages speak one language in their family and another being out of the house. Since I used to be this type of bilingual I always thought that there's a lot of this type of possibilities to communicate. But small town doesn't give much of perspective to choose a job among others. I chose languages because I watched with interest my mother translating authors' thoughts from one language to another trying to be maximum accurate about transferring the sense. And how illustrators then embody it into another form. Later on this word and image concordance settled in our textbooks pages. I chose English intuitively. And French as a second language was something I liked. I can easily speak Adige, it's my mother tongue. I understand several dialects like Kabardian, Circassian. And of course another mother tongue I am thinking, speaking and writing in, Russian.
When I come to an English speaking country I adapt for some first moments. Information flow is on: you swim and dissolve in it. Of course you can't always choose a precise word for every notion. Therefore the skill to define, give versatile explanation is very important.
A multipurpose advice: no need to be scared to make mistakes. Unfortunately our education system, especially high education, universities preparing teachers demand from students slender, beautiful, grammatically correct speech and for God's sake no grammar mistakes, no way. And fear slows down speaking. Interpreter's job helped me to get rid of this fear. After I graduated the pedagogical institute I wanted something unusual. At that time it seemed to me that interpreter is of a higher status than teacher. But it became evident very soon that teacher is a separate job but interpreter is subordinate. Metaphrast. And metaphrast is a key word: you have to paraphrase what had been told. At that moment you stop thinking about grammar mistakes; you have to transfer the essential information for people who discuss every detail of a contract understand each other accurately. This job gave me a precious experience: diving in the flow never be scared of mistakes, it is much more important to reach a mutual understanding.
If we trust Vygotskiy speechthinking develops in native language. Experience and scientific research show that it is necessary for a child to learn his mother tongue, to understand it and express himself on his level before he is three years old. It is so complicated in Russian with its cases, declensions, conjugations — incomprehensible. And no one explains the rules to a child. He is going through it by trying and making mistakes. We can add another language later on step by step entering a group where teacher is speaking only English. Then a child in the interactive atmosphere with children of his age more easily learns a new language especially when communication is happening in a game form.
I consider understanding of necessity to learn a foreign language at the level enough to communicate even in a limited form and the possibility to learn two foreign languages at school in order to be able to choose, to be one of the achievements of our concept we wrote in 2017. Let's say parents choose English. He studied up to the fifths grade and there's an insight in his and his parents ' brain. They understand that maybe Spanish gives better perspective for a self realization in future job. Means that it's time to start to learn Spanish as a second foreign language and then pass the examination in English or in Spanish but a teenager has choice.
Domestic methodology does understand ow that foreign language has several hypostasis. First of all it forms communicative competence which makes it possible to use new language as an instrument in various activities: everyday, professional, artistic, etc. Secondary it lets us reach mutual understanding on the sociocultural level as well with native speakers of the studied language. And third is a way of developing a scholar, a multifunctional field; while learning foreign language we read various texts, open various life spheres widening the horizon of teenager and enriching his thoughts and emotions.
Lively speech dramatically differs from books' and official language; it contains emotional outbursts. For example English is strictly structured, subject and action can't exchange their places. But if you ever communicated with an Englishmen you might had felt calm on the surface flowing river background is hiding a vivid soul and they cry out emotionally: 'Oh, no!' sometimes grammar is something like structural fetters and emotions break them.
Today's pupils differ from Soviet cause they know they can use foreign language on practice in real life. Today's world demands it and growing generation is ready for interpersonal and intercultural communication and the most important instrument for this is knowledge of other nations languages.
Tatiana Chernigovskaya is right when she says that brain is like body and it means that we can develop it in a way. We have to train it and learning languages is one of the best trainings. There's several activities that slows down the brain aging; playing chess, crosswords and sudokus, any kind of art and especially learning languages, poetry in native and foreign languages. Language learning process is all based on imagination; we play out different situations and wear a huge amount of different roles. Learning foreign language is a micro theater, social training followed by moving, singing cause it all helps to remember language unites and activate speech skills.
I sometimes see in my dreams that I stand front of a canvas and I do know what point to start with. The main thing for this point is to go deep and widen the space. Because the world we live in today is volume. It's vertical is us, people with our dreams and fulfillments, worries and happinesses. Each of us has his own path but horizontals we live in come across each other and in some points our path becomes mutual; a path of understanding and careful attitude towards each other. Cause we are all leaves of one tree.
