NUMERALS TO EXPRESS TIME АAS AN OBJECT OF STUDY IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE AUDIENCE

Abstract

The time and ways of its expressing in the Ukrainian language are quite difficult for overseas students, taking into account the parallel use of several syntactic constructions and a significant number of colloquial options. The article analyzes the specific features of using numerals to express time and subordinate grammatical meanings of gender, number, case within the context of linguodidactic problems of teaching foreigners the Ukrainian language. The exercise is seen as a repetitive performance of actions to acquire knowledge and develop strong language and speech skills and abilities. A system of exercises and training tasks are proposed for developing skills of normatively expessing the time. The key point in the preparation of exercises is to determine the volume of educational grammar material, the criteria for its selection and the sequence of its delivery, as well as the ways and means of its most effective presentation. The developed exercises are based on the principles of communicative orientation, interdependence, consistency, comprehensibility, repetition of language material and speech actions in the learning process, a gradual increase in the complexity of the educational material. In particular, these are exercises and tasks for expressing the time, using parallel structures, establishing a compliance between numerical and verbal ways of expressing time, exercises of the question-answer type, etc. The exercises are designed in such a way that to combine, as much as possible, in each lesson all types of educational activities of an overseas student: listening, reading, speaking, and writing. Emphasis is placed on numerous variants of colloquial clichés to express a certain hour or time interval, which creates additional difficulties in learning the way of telling time in Ukrainian in a foreign language audience. The practical use of the proposed exercises will help teachers of the Ukrainian language to improve the effectiveness of training and to reach the desired competence level of students, to contribute to an increase in the effectiveness of organizing educational and cognitive activities of overseas students. Subsequent research materials will be aimed at improving and testing the developed set of exercises and training tasks to shape the skills of correct time expressing in the Ukrainian language at the Center for Distance Learning and Postgraduate Education of the Ukrainian National Forestry University. Key words: time, hour, minute, ordinal numbers, grammatical meaning, grammatical form, Ukrainian as a foreign language.