332
17)
to be secret - not understood by those around one (Children, students, lovers, members of
political secret societies, and criminals in or out of prison, innocent persons in prison are the chief
exponents ) [5].
To sum up it becomes clear that slang today is a part of social and personal life which expresses
feelings and attitude better than literal and academic words. To illustrate, “nice”, as an adjective of all
work, was once in slang use only; today no one would question “a nice day”, or “a nice time or “a nice
hotel”. Awful seems to be going the same route. “Awful sweet” and “awfully dear” still seem slangy
and school-girlish, but “awful children”, “awful weather” and “an awful job” have entirely sound
support, and no one save a pedant would hesitate to use them.
Creativeness, innovativeness, freshness and imaginativeness, as well as vulgarity, obscenity,
offensiveness and unconventionality, etc. are characteristic features referring to the youth slang
terminology. Today`s slang is created on the basis of students` need to be cool at all points of their life,
for example,acting, clothing, thinking and speaking as well. Slang is trendy and fashionable and it must
be remembered that following the students speech means to be open to new terms existing in language
and creating them.
Slang does not belong only to the youth but it is closely related to all environments consisting of
teachers, parents, school and out-of-school activities and expresses a specific form of students'
perception of reality. Slang is usually restricted to a specific time, which means it is topical only for a
short time period and replaced by other terms soon; however, it may cover some invariable expressions
passing through time. Moreover, it is restricted to a concrete place, which means it might be used and
understood by a particular school institution and people there. It is usually created by the idea of an
individual adapted to people nearby, enriched by various semantic associations, synonyms or corrupted
words. Therefore, the instances are found in which one concept is represented by a great number of
slang terms.
Literature
1.
MacNeil R. English Belongs to Everybody in Language Awareness 4th edition. – P. 140-144
2.
Gonzales F.R Youth and Student Slang in British and American English, 1994. -201 p.
3.
Green, J. Slang through the Ages. Ntc Pub Group, 1996. - 393p.
4.
Johnson, Sh. What is Slang? on http: // www2 .uncp. edu / home / Canada / work / allam /
1914 / language /slang.htm
5.
Partridge, E.
Slang: Today and Yesterday. William Press, 1993. - 484 p.
333
K.M. Nabiyeva
Astana (Kazakhstan)
THE BENEFITS OF APPLYING THE INFORMATION GAP TECHNIQUE IN AN
EFL CLASSROOM
Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) postulates an important part of realm of
education and becomes a teachers’ compound duty in providing the best teaching methods,
approaches, and techniques during the learning process.
The concept of the information gap is an important aspect of communication in a
communicative language teaching classroom. This is based on the fact that in their everyday lives
people generally communicate in order to get information they do not possess. This is referred to as
an information gap. If students can be involved in information gap activities in order to exchange
unknown information in language classrooms, more authentic communication is likely to occur in
the classroom.
M. Asrobi states that an information gap activity is an activity where learners are missing
the information they need to complete a task and need to talk to each other to find it. Information
gap activities are useful for various reasons. They provide an opportunity for extended speaking
practice, they represent real communication in which motivation can be high, and they require sub-
skills such as clarifying meaning and re-phrasing [1, p. 3].
Furthermore, M. Asrobi states that information gap activities can also reinforce vocabulary
and a variety of grammatical structures taught in class. They allow students to use linguistic forms
and functions in a communicative way. These activities bring the language to life for students.
Grammar is no longer a concept they have difficulty in applying their speaking. Students have much
the opportunity to use the language which is taught to them to speak in the target language. Typical
types of information gap activities that might be found include “describing and drawing”, “spotting
the difference”, “jigsaw speaking and listening”, and “split dictations”[1,p. 5].
The successful teaching is when students are able to gain language competence, language
comprehension, and language production. In other words, the students are able to express
themselves fluently in a foreign language. Some researchers list the opportunities of a successful
speaking activity [1, p. 10]:
1. Learners talk a lot. As much as possible of the period of time allotted to the activity is in
fact occupied by the learner talk. This may be obvious, but often most time is taken up with the
teacher’s talk or pauses.
2. Participation is even. Classroom discussion is not dominated by a minority of talkative
participants: all get a chance to speak, and contributions are fairly and evenly distributed.
3. Motivation is high. Learners are eager to speak: because they are interested in the topic
and have something new to say about it, or because they want to contribute to achieving the task.
4. Language is of an acceptable level.
5. Learners express themselves in utterances that are relevant, easy comprehensible to
teach others at the acceptable level of language accuracy.
6. Students encourage one another to speak because all students are engaged in a
speaking activity.
C. Andrade also presents some advantages of using information gap activity as described
below[2, p. 10]:
More communication takes place
- Extending speaking practice.
-
Learners
concentrate
on
communication for information.
- Learners talk a lot/ produce more
Motivation is high
- Students have a reason to talk.
- They are engaged in a thinking
process.
- Equal opportunities of learning for
