Interviewing: a speaking club activity to teach grammar to non-linguists

Introduction: Relevance of the research is defined by the need to design new methods aimed at enhancing learners’ grammar proficiency, which could meet the requirements of new educational standards in relation to graduates’ communicative competence. A possible reason for graduates’ inability to successfully communicate in the foreign language is ineffective traditional grammar-teaching methods still used at non-linguistic universities. Teaching grammar in line with the communicative approach could help avoid too formal a procedure typical of traditional approaches, and be instrumental in increasing the speaking practice time.

The study is aimed at designing a method of using the interviewing activity borrowed from speaking club sessions in order to work on grammar skills in classes of non-linguists with L2 levels varying from Elementary to Advanced.

Research materials and methods included analysing a pool of relevant publications, testing the method proposed in four groups of non-linguists with levels of English varied from Elementary to Advanced, interviewing the students in the target groups, interpreting the survey results.

The Research results: interviewing activity as a communicative method to teach grammar is successfully applied at Lobachevsky University. Practical recommendations are provided.

Discussion and conclusion. First, the proposed method raises learners’ interest to the subject of the foreign language. Second, it lowers the level of foreign language anxiety and increases foreign language enjoyment. Third, it treats L2 as a means to receive and exchange information, which develops learners’ social interaction skills.

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