Development of General Communicative Learning Skills: Going Through Lesson Stages

The national Russian system of education is regulated by a number of laws, among which the Federal State Educational Standard is one of the most important legal documents; it is a guideline governing what skills students must acquire and what they must learn. The paper describes general learning skills that the educational standard requires to develop with the focus on general communicative learning skills (GCLS). The best environment for developing GCLS is a foreign language lesson. In the article, the authors consider what results concerning GCLS can be achieved at every lesson stage and what methods and techniques can be involved in the development process.


Introduction
The process of renovating the education system in contemporary Russia has been going on for a long time. For nearly three decades Russia has been trying to find the proper solutions that help to make the education system effective. The national Russian system of education embodies philosophical and psychological activity theory. The revolutionary works by L.S. Vygotsky, S.L. Rubinstein and A.N. Leontev were widely spread in Russia in the 20th century, and activity theory has become the foundation for reforming education in the 21 century [1]. The efforts to apply activity theory in actual practice of teaching have made scholars and experts work out some intermediate concepts [2]. The Russian research school headed by A.G. Asmolov has made a great contribution to the theoretical development of the principals put into the present standard of education [3].
Today secondary schools aim to teach the whole person; students come to school not only for learning, but also for developing personalities and acquiring transferable skills. The focus of teaching is placed on both curriculum knowledge and the development of general leaning skills [4]. School students are expected to fulfill a number of objectives, for instance: to obtain information from different sources of general and specific character; -to make social contacts, communicate and correspond in both formal and informal situations; -to express views and opinions on issues of general and specific interest.
The enumerated objectives are an inseparable part of communication and social interaction; they require acquisition and development of communicative skills. Nowadays communicative skills are listed alongside with general learning skills in the Federal State Educational Standard for secondary schools. The main resource for developing students' general communicative learning skills is a foreign language lesson. In the paper a foreign language lesson is considered from that angle.

Requirements of the Federal State Educational Standard
The introduction of general norms and requirements into the education system has taken 26 years. The process has undergone five stages: 1993-1996, 1997-1998, 2001-2004, 2010-2013, and 2018-2019. The third stage of reforms and modernization of education resulted in adapting the Russian educational standard. Later this standard was called the first generation standard. Further development of the society and political management system led to changes in the state education system. These changes brought about the introduction of the new Federal State Educational Standard for secondary schools in 2004.
The standard of 2013 or the standard of the second generation revealed a number of significant differences in comparison with the previous educational standard. First of all, it is noteworthy that the concept of educational objectives is replaced by the concept of the requirements of the educational results. According to the standard, educational results are divided into three groups: general, specific (applied to a certain course), and personal. Thus, the standard recommends the entire education system to achieve and assess educational results. In 2019 some changes were introduced to this standard, they touched upon some specific curriculum issues.
General (across-the-curriculum) results of education imply the development of general learning skills and their application in educational and social activities.
General learning skills are the basis for school students' social and personal interaction [5]. They help to facilitate group activities, overcome conflict situations, and create the atmosphere of cooperation and collaboration.

General Learning Skills in the Federal State Educational Standard
Within general learning skills, the following categories are distinguished: regulative, cognitive, and communicative.
General regulative learning skills are necessary for students' independent activities, such as their self-motivation, self-assessment, self-control, self-correction, self-development, emotional self-regulation, personal and professional self-determination.
The system of general cognitive learning skills, as a component of cognitive activities, includes: logical operations, reasoning, making conclusions, hypothesizing, finding facts, searching for evidence, modelling, systematization, classification on the basis of verified criteria, summarizing; conversing verbal information into graphic and vice versa; qualitative and quantitative data processing, using information technologies [6]. The development of general cognitive learning skills as comprehensive curriculum results of education is connected with research activities that are based on the scientific methods, such as analysis, synthesis, deduction, induction, analogy.
General communicative learning skills are divided into two categories: individual and collective. The first category includes skills of individual delivery the information verbally, its logical up-lining or chaining, and presentation to the public /in public. The second category embraces skills of team interaction, interpersonal discussion and students' abilities to argue their own point of view. Also some key requirements should be fulfilled to develop general communicative learning skills. Primarily a teacher must involve students in situations of effective communication and enable them to express themselves. In their turn students should be aware of the strategies, tactics, rules, and norms of polite, peaceful interaction and eager to follow them.
In order to implement conflict-free, fruitful communication, students should be able to produce written text and speak in an articulate fashion (the latter may be in the form of monologue, dialogue, or polylogue), language norms and communicative aspects of speech (accuracy, clarity, diversity, purity, expressiveness) being observed.
Students are engaged in the learning process through communication; they are challenged cognitively; free to contribute their own opinions, positive emotions, and experience; encouraged to develop general leaning skills.

Developing General Communicative Learning Skills at a Foreign Language Lesson
The Federal State Educational Standard for secondary schools recommends teachers to develop general learning skills while teaching all curriculum subjects. The field of philology gives a lot of opportunities for acquiring, developing, mastering, and up-dating general communicative learning skills. All philological courses, especially language courses, are favourable for enriching the vocabulary, teaching students to verbalize their ideas clearly, being patient, attentive, and responsive interlocutors, being articulate in discussions.
It should be noted that the main format of secondary school studies in Russia is delivered in 45-minute lessons. Teachers are to design lessons in accordance with the course syllabus. Every lesson is dedicated to achieve special, concrete, and distinct goals, e.g. to introduce new material, train skills, control the acquired skills and knowledge, etc. [7]. The most common type of a lesson is such a lesson that pursues two or more objectives, or a multi-purpose lesson. Let us analyze a multi-purpose foreign language lesson taking into account the requirements of the Federal State Educational Standard for secondary schools. As lessons are modelled in stages, we consider the possibility to develop students' general communicative learning skills (GCLS) in every stage. Table 1 shows the results of developing general communicative learning skills at every lesson stage (Table 1). While designing a lesson, the teacher should think of and fix methods and techniques that help students acquire and develop their skills for conducting effective contacts and communication. A number of methods and techniques that have proven to be especially supportive to develop general communicative learning skills are outlined in Table 2.

Summary
The Federal State Educational Standard for secondary schools in Russia sets a number of requirements to be fulfilled in the educational process. The general results of education are reflected in the development of a number of transferable skills related to all subjects that students learn. They are called general learning skills and can be divided into three groups: regulative, cognitive, and communicative. A foreign language lesson gives lots of opportunities to develop students' general communicative learning skills. A foreign language teacher must ensure that students are involved in the process of developing general communicative learning skills at all lesson stages. In conclusion, we would like to stress that the above mentioned methods and techniques might be taken as a recommendation in developing GCLS while teaching all curriculum courses.