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Back to the main page 1. Theory of Dynamic Conceptual Mappings
Together with Prof. Vladimir A. Fomichov, I elaborated a new theory of effective knowledge transfer called the Theory of Dynamic Conceptual Mappings (the DCM-theory). Very shortly, it is a theory of effective enriching the inner world's pictures of the learners, developing their abstract thinking, associative abilities, imagination.
The DCM-theory considers teaching as a particular case of conveying information from one intelligent system (a teacher) to other intelligent systems (the learners).
The central constituent of the DCM-theory is a conception of effective developing the thinking and mental outlook of young children and teenagers. The another important constituent is destined for effective training of teachers.
Proceeding from our new theory, we worked up new methods of teaching English as a foreign language (FL) to young children and teenagers and of positive developing the personality of the child. These methods are called the Methods of Emotional-Imaginative Teaching (EIT-methods).
2. General characterization of the Methods of Emotional-Imaginative Teaching
Proceeding from the DCM-theory, we elaborated an original extra-scholastic programme of harmonic humanitarian development of the child. The programme is destined for teaching children during eight years, where the starting age is four-and-half - six years. It is based on the EIT-methods and was succesfully tested by me during eight years.
It includes the following series (or cycles) of lessons:
| (1) | a two-year course (the age of learners is 5 - 7 or 6 - 8 years) of studying the main rules of reading and speaking English as a FL, including learning basic elements of English grammar (Present Simple and Past Simple Tenses); | ||
| (2) | a course on mastering the language of describing the nature and feelings evoked by the nature; | ||
| (3) | a course on understanding the language of painting; | ||
| (4) | a course on understanding the language of poetry (with the accent on understanding metaphors and descriptions of the nature); | ||
| (5) |
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| (6) | a course on perfecting the knowledge of English grammar (during mainly the fifth year of studies). |
In fact, the lessons of the courses (2) - (6) may interchange.
The kernel of our new programme is an original method of teaching 5-6-year-old children to read fluently in English as a FL and to discuss complicated texts written in Present Simple or Past Simple Tenses. The key to achieving this success was given by the DCM-theory: the analogies provided by the specially composed fairy-tales enable the teacher to establish effective correspondencies between the studied fragment of English grammar and a situation from a fairy-tale (Fomichov & Fomichova, 1995, 1996; Fomichova & Fomichov, 1996).
Our new methods of teaching languages develop abstract thinking and imagination of children, the love to the nature, the ability to see the beauty in all its manifestations, to understand the language of poetry and painting, to see clearly causal relationships of diverse events, to understand other people, to express one's own thoughts and feelings, to acquire actively new knowledge. One of the consequences is that the EIT-methods highly outstrip the other known methods of teaching children under ten to read fluently and discuss complicated texts in English as a FL (let's note that English is very different from Russian), to express thoughts and feelings in a FL, to be interesting for a partner in a communication.
Let's mention here only the following facts: students of the 3rd year of studies in my experimental groups (the age 7 - 8 years) read fluently and discuss such a stilistically difficult book as unadapted "Alice's Adventures in Wonder Land" by Lewis Carroll, are able to describe just on the spot the landscapes or the nature around; students of the 4th year understand poetical metaphors in FL. The dominant part of the EIT-methods is language-independent and may be effectively used in teaching children to express thoughts and emotions in mother tongue.
One of the important features of the EIT-methods is a unified, informational-cybernetic approach to teaching both natural language (mother tongue, foreign languages) and the language of painting. The modern Semiotics considers pictures as symbolic expressions (or texts) , where the role of symbols is played by the combinations of lines, colours, etc. Children are taught to decode the messages conveyed by the pictures.