The Role of Phonetic Abilities in Learning English

Relevance. The implementation of the Federal State Educational Standards (FSES) and the focus on the necessity to identify and develop learners’ abilities creates new challenges for teachers of the English language. In particular, there is a necessity to develop new assessment tools to cope with these challenges.

Aim. To identify the correlation between phonetic abilities and success in learning the English language.

Methodology. Methods of theoretical research – analysis, comparison, generalization. Methods of empirical research – testing, surveying, studying and summarizing pedagogical experience. The methods of mathematical and statistical data processing – the method of comparison of values.

Scientific novelty/theoretical and/or practical significance. This study demonstrates the correlation between phonetic abilities and outcomes in learning the English language, which in turn demonstrates the importance of developing phonetic skills in students at all levels of school education. The analysis of Russian and foreign scientific literature in the field of language abilities can be used for further study of the research topic and development of tool models for diagnosing structural elements of language ability. The results of the conducted research contribute to the theory of teaching a foreign language at the level of basic general education, and the presented tool for assessing phonetic abilities can be used in teacher’s practical activities in order to identify and develop individual abilities of students.

Results. The article presents the results of the research which shows a definite link between students’ phonetic abilities and their success in learning the English language. The article also raises the issue of the importance of developing phonetic skills at the level of basic general education.

Conclusions. This paper has presented information about the new challenges that teachers face in the context of the implementation of the new FSES. One of the requirements is the necessity to identify and develop students’ abilities. A number of studies demonstrate the correlation between phonetic abilities and success in learning a foreign language. In Russian practice, there is a decrease in attention to the development of phonetic skills at the level of basic general education, but when moving to the next level of education after primary school it is very important to continue working on the development of phonetic abilities. In addition, it is important to use diagnostic procedures to determine the level of phonetic skills development, as this data will help to build a more effective English language teaching program.

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