CULTURAL AND LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT OF PRESCHOOLERS AND JUNIOR SCHOOLCHILDREN IN THE PROCESS OF LEARNING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Abstract

The article deals with the issues of children’s cultural and linguistic development in the pro-cess of foreign languages early learning and offers theory and practice foundation for children’s cognitive and intellectual development. The necessity of improving early language education in con-nection with the identified causes at the socio-pedagogical, scientific-theoretical and scientific-methodological levels is substantiated. The focus on the in-depth study of the classical theory of preschool children psychophysiolog-ical features is logically argued. Taking as a basis L.S. Vygotsky’s cultural and historical concept which includes D.B. Elkonin’s activity approach, the article determines the necessity of creating a teaching environment while providing a broad game basis as the main source of the subject, game and speech activity of the child acquiring cultural and linguistic material. The didactic organization includes the definition of the purpose, principles, requirements for selecting the content and development of modern technology for early developing foreign language teaching. Having adopted a number of educational and game methods after Klarin, the practice-oriented and scientifically-based language development of children is modified, the stages of work-ing with children on language material (presentation, comprehension of the content, involvement in speech activity, discussion of the lesson with children) are described, including both the didactic foundation and the child’s reaction to his/her learning activity. In group game activities, children learn to think, feel and act independently, to find mutual understanding with peers and the teacher, to criticize themselves for wrong actions, to represent the results of their work (to talk, describe, ex-plain, draw, select illustrative material). In conclusion, the results of children’s mastery of cultural and linguistic knowledge are given and a modern interpretation of children’s language development in the framework of an early learn-ing is proposed.

Keywords

• cultural and linguistic development
• gaming activities
• cultural and historical approach
• development of mental abilities
• teaching environment.