The thesis is aimed at developing, substantiating and testing experimentally the effectiveness of content and methodical support for the future primary school teacher’s training to the use of media tools at foreign language lessons. Therefore, the object of the study is primary school teacher’s professional training to teach foreign languages, and the subject of the study is the content and methodical support of primary school teacher’s training to the use of media tools at foreign languages lesson.
The concepts of research are grouped into basic and derivative ones. Their essence and content are specified on the basis of the scientific sources analysis. Media tools are considered as objects, equipment and materials that provide functioning of media and information space in the form of audio, visual, audio-visual messages and are singled out by the teacher to organize an active foreign language educational process for primary school pupils. The concept «future primary school teacher’s training to the use of media tools at foreign languages lessons» is interpreted as a dynamic, subject-subject process of knowledge acquisition, formation of skills and abilities through active ways of cognitive activity, which affects the effective formation of readiness for this activity. The term «the future primary school teacher's readiness to the use of media tools at foreign languages lessons» is defined as an integrative personality’s quality that is the complex of positive motivation, linguistic and methodological knowledge, technological and media skills, the ability to create media products and reflection to arrange the educational process effectively and ensure the quality of foreign language teaching at primary school.
Structural components (motivational, cognitive, technological, reflexive), criteria (personal-purpose, knowledge, methodical, evaluative-reflexive), indicators and levels (productive, sufficient, reproductive) of the readiness of primary school teacher’s to the use media tools at foreign languages lessons are determined. Diagnostic tools are developed to evaluate the level of future primary school teachers’ readiness to the use media tool at foreign languages lessons.
The content and methodical support of future primary school teachers’ training to the use of media tools at foreign languages lessons is considered as a set of content, leading forms, active methods and media. This content and methodical support includes the content module «Innovative tools of teaching foreign languages at primary school» of the course «Foreign language with teaching methods»; scientific and methodic workshop «Media school of future teacher»; supplementing the content of the foreign language block of the course «Foreign language with teaching methods» and «Modern English language with practice» with topics that are related to the critical analysis and evaluation of different media types).
It is summarized that the formation of structural components of the future primary school teacher's readiness to the use of media tools at foreign languages lessons in accordance to the defined content and methodical support occurs in a system with appropriate methodical support, namely: developed and implemented into the educational process an authorial digital media center of a pedagogue «Do with us, do as we do, do better that we do!»; various media tools (manuals, newspapers, magazines, etc.), equipment (computers, tablets, smartphones, Internet), materials (websites, educational platforms, blogs, video platforms, online articles, video, audio, interactive video, digital images, emoji, comics, infographics, multimedia presentations, timelines, audio books, interactive crossword puzzles, word clouds, clusters, QR codes, digital generators, social networks, mobile applications, etc.).
Content and methodological support of primary school teachers; training to the use of media at foreign language lessons has been tested and its effectiveness has been experimentally verified with the use the methods of mathematical statistics (Student's t-test, Fisher's test) and computing program Statistica7.
