Forming auditory skills through the audio theatre method in the course of project work

Abstract

The research is devoted to the issue of teaching listening to school students. The paper aims to explore the potential of the audio theatre method for solving the problem of forming such schoolchildren’s auditory skills as the interpretation of speech utterances and the control of speech. The study utilises the methods of modelling audio theatre activity and theoretical literature analysis as well as the comparison between intonational and sound interpretation and audio theatre. The paper describes the procedural model of audio theatrical activity and the forms of organising school students’ work on an audio performance (lesson-reading, lesson-communication). Additionally, literary genres and literary texts that can be subject to oral interpretation are mentioned. The examples of converting genre-role scenes from A. S. Pushkin’s works (mainly from «The Captain’s Daughter») into sound form demonstrate the way the audio theatre method is applied. The paper consistently conveys the nuances of converting the verbal language and the paralanguage of individual dialogic fragments into sound. It is concluded that audio theatre is effective not only as a method of building the skills that are needed to interpret and control speech. Moreover, helping learners to master listening skills in practical activity, audio theatre is a method to stimulate readers’ interpretations, develop students’ meta-consciousness, and bring together two school subjects, namely the Russian Language and Literature.