The increase of the level of general preparation of the pupils in many respects depends on the rational organization of the methods of teaching and the further improvement of the process of education. The most important task in mastering  the educational process at schools still remains the task- in what way the teacher should raise the cognitive activity of the pupils in learning, how to use in his work different forms and means of teaching English at the lessons.

For many years the teachers of English have been looking for new ways to improve the teaching of the English language, especially it concerned the control and generalization lessons. The problems were how to make the lessons interesting, not scaring for the pupils, in what way to organize the testing of the knowledge and the skills acquired by the pupils during a short period of time. In what way to create such a psychological climate at the lesson so as to make pupils feel at ease and show the acquired knowledge? How to make the tasks feasible for the pupils but at the same time created with higher motivation?

Free possession of English suggests that a pupil should spontaneously react upon different situations of real life which means that the final goal of the educational process at school is the development of the pupil’s ability to have an unprepared talk in English both monologue and dialogue.  

Today there have been developed a great variety of non-traditional lessons which give full answers to the questions raised above.  These are the following new types of lessons: “Lesson –Seminar”, “Lesson –Excursion”, “Quiz “What? Where? When?”, a game “The Field of Wonders”, lesson  “Club of Merry and Cute”, “Lesson- Conference”, “Lesson Press-conference”, “Linguistic Stagecoach”, “Television Bridge” , integrated lessons, music lessons and many others. Non- traditional   forms of the lessons attract the attention of the pupils, raise their interest in learning English and as a result they motivate their better adoption of the material learnt.

 Of course we do not work only with excellent pupils in class, our communities are composed of varies backgrounds and cultures, which include pupils of different learning styles and abilities, so in order to involve all the pupils into the educational process we must be very careful, tolerant but at the same time persistent so that none of the pupils should remain unheeded. At these non-traditional lessons we give them a good chance to reveal their may be rather scanty knowledge of the subject and   to feel comfortable.

The practical application of such lessons shows that all the pupils are waiting for them both the industrious and the lazy bones.

  LESSONS OF THE TYPE   “THE CLUB OF MERRY AND CUTE”

These are the mostly widely spread types of non - standard lessons.  The children like them, because the lessons help reveal their knowledge, creative activity. They are especially popular with the pupils of different language levels.  Such lessons are usually held either at the end of the semester (a generalization lesson) or at the beginning of the next one (a repetitive lesson). The class or a group of pupils is divided into two teams and in this competition the results of the whole team and of each separate pupil are evaluated, which stimulates pupils’ activity. The tasks are quite various and concern different aspects of oral communication.

Many of the tasks suggest collective command action and mutual assistance – which is good for the pupils with poor knowledge of English.   Such lessons   stimulate the oral activities of all the pupils of different language levels. The teacher controls track record of the lesson, comments on the answers and makes corrections in a friendly manner. These lessons are usually conducted in senior Grades.

An example of such type of a lesson in the 9 Grade: The topic is “Do you know America?”

Here are several tasks for the teams:

1.     Presentation of the participating teams: names of the teams, emblems, mottoes.

2.     Questions of the type “Do you know or do you remember?”  Do you know the name of the first president of the USA? Do you remember the name of the author of the Declaration of Independence? All of you know a lot about tea-parties, what can you tell us about the Boston Tea party?, etc.

 3.      “Q. look at the American History” -   Name the first people in America. Where did the American Indians come from? What was the cultural situation in North America before men from Europe came? Who was the first to open America: Columbus or the Vikings?  What can you tell us about Eiriksson’s map of “The Land of the Vine?” Who went to the New World in 1620? What do you know about the first Thanksgiving celebration?, etc.

4.     Famous people of America.  Who were they? The team describes a person; the other team must guess who he is. 

For example: He was American. He was born in the backwoods of America in 1809. His parents lived in a log hut. The family was poor and he had to earn his living at the age of 11. He performed a variety of jobs. Later he became a lawyer and was elected President of the USA. He freed the black slaves. He was killed at Ford’s theatre by an actor named John Booth in 1865.      (Abraham Lincoln)

5.     Competition of the captains. They must answer each other’s questions concerning history, culture, American holidays, etc. The questions are usually rather difficult and the teams greet each failure of the opponent with applause and shouting.   

  6.   Say Tongue Twister. 

To prepare for this competition we use the computer course   “Professor Higgins” with lots of twisters. The pupils practice to say   them with different speed; besides they can check their pronunciation with the recorded master pronunciation, recording on the computer themselves and listing to both variants.

7.     The competition of amateur performances.  Both teams recite the poems; sing folk and popular American songs.   

   8.     The jury names the winners, the teacher summaries the results.

                                                LESSONS- EXCURSIONS

Such topics can be used as a base for excursions: school, our town, shopping, traveling, going sightseeing.., etc. in 6-7 Grades.

LESSONS REVUE

 Lessons revue in the 3-5 Grades.

The number of topics defines the number of role-plays.

1. "Let’s get acquainted.” The class is divided into two groups – English and   American children and Russian children. They meet each other, get acquainted, try to find a pen friend for further correspondence.

 2.      “Family”. One group represents a family – grandfather, grandmother, etc. They speak about each other.

3.      “Our School”.  One group speaks about junior schools in England the other speaks about our schools.

4.      “Birthday”. The hero of the day brings a cake. We organize a tea party.

         In senior Grades are very popular such types of lessons as lesson-seminar, lesson conference, lesson press conference.

An example of the conference: the class is given a task to find the material about this or that problem. Of course all the speakers can’t speak on their feet and certain preparations must be done beforehand.  One pupil is a main talker, the rest are his co-talkers. For example, the topic is: “What must we do to keep Dagestan clean”. One pupil speaks about general protection of the environment in Dagestan, the rest of the pupils speak about air and water pollution, the destruction of mountains, the destruction of a miracle of Dagestan – the sandy hill Sara Koum not far from Makhachkala, about the animals and birds enlisted into the Red Book, etc.  

An example of a press- conference:

For many years the governments of Russian Federation, Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkmen and Kazakhstan have been considering the problem of sea borders of the Caspian sea, the exploration of it’s bottom and fishing. They have come to the press-conference and try to explain the difficulties they are facing in the solution of all the disputable questions, the pupils – journalists ask them questions. Etc.

 LINGUISTIC EXPRESS

The class is divided into several groups which will represent carriages. The aim of this expresses is to reach the station of destination safely and without losses. There are several stations on the way of the train: Lexical, Grammatical, Poetic, Musical, Cute, etc. It depends on the teacher’s taste which stations to choose.  When the train reaches the station the conductor gets a sealed envelope with the tasks to be done. Collective work is welcomed.  The tasks may be the following: 

-         to give the meaning of a certain group of words and to compose sentences with them.

-         composing a situation with a group of words;

-         the words in the sentences are jumbled. Put them in the right order;

-         recite the verse we have recently learned;

-         speak about …. (depends on the topics recently learned).

-         sing your favorite English song, etc.

                        LESSONS OF THE TYPE “THE ROUND TABLE”.

 These types of lessons are gradually becoming very popular with the teachers. The content of such a lesson is usually a conversation on a certain topic or problem which is dear and important for the children. The teacher and the pupils move the tables to form a huge table and take their seats. In such a close connection and co-operation with the pupils the teacher can prototype real communication in English and the barrier between the teacher and the pupils seems to vanish.

It depends on the teacher how he is going to start the talk, as for me, I usually start the lesson like this: “My dear boys and girls. Try to forget that I’m a teacher and you are my students and we are at the lesson. Let’s have a friendly talk about ….”.

There are lots of topics that can be used as a theme for communication:

-         2 Grade “Acquaintance with each pupil”. The pupils introduce themselves, their friends; say where they are from, etc.

        “Acquaintance with the families of co-pupils.”

        “My favorite toy” 

        "What games do you like to play?”

-         3 Grade.  “Holidays”, “Visiting friends”, “Having birthday’, etc.

So it’s no problem for the teacher to organize the conversation, but the lexical and grammar phenomena should be revised prior to the talk.

                              SING OUT ENGLISH SONGS.

The task to join the pupils to cultural heritage and spiritual values of their own nation and other nations and peoples of the world can also be successfully solved in the process of teaching English.

The use of authentic singing material can be of great help. A very good collection of songs is collected in the text book “Cambridge English for schools in Russia.”. They can be used in junior and senior grades. The use of singing material stimulates the motivation and in this way helps better assimilation of language material, thanks to involuntary memorizing of the words and the melody.   

The Great Russian teacher Ushinsky thought that the joint chant at the lesson was the best teacher’s remedy, which united, organized and brought up the pupils’ feelings. Singing can be used either at the beginning of the lesson as a phonetic drill, as a base for mastering lexical and grammatical structures, as a discharge and relaxation at any stage of the lesson.  

  The forms and types of the lessons can be different but they’ve got one and the same aim that unites all these non-traditional types of lessons into one chain – to give each pupil a good knowledge of English, make him be able to speak on certain unprepared topics and in case he meets a foreigner not to fail at answer at least his questions.