THE COSHCO (CORE-SHELL CONCEPT) NEURO-LOGICAL METHOD OF TEACHING ENGLISH

In the 30th of last century the American scientists E. Sapir and B.L. Whorf brought forward "linguistic relativity hypothesis" which in its "strong" (extreme) form stated that thinking was determined by the language and in its "weak" (more moderate) form that thinking was influenced by the language. In our article, we are going to speak about how our tongue, being one of the most important articulation organs, if not determines then to a great extend influences thinking and therefore has received the key position in COSHCO (Core-Shell Concept) method of teaching a foreign language (in our case English). The method offers to "enter" the language system via phonetics. It is crucial that phonetics is taught not by imitative method, which means imitating a foreign language sounds "by ear", repeating after a teacher, but by bringing students to the articulation basis of the language they are taught. The base of articulation basis is to a great extend determined by the tongue position while pronouncing some consonants that we call "tuning" and typical lip movement. With the help of various physical exercises and conscious switching from the native articulation basis to the articulation basis of the language learned, a student as a result obtains physiological ability to speak (and speaking is a physical act!) a foreign language. He or she does it not only "switching" their articulation apparatus in a natural way but also "switching on" and developing the muscles that have not been involved while speaking their mother tongue. Obtaining a foreign articulation basis not imitating a foreign sound "by ear" provides flow of speech authenticity in general. The flow of speech characteristics play a very important role in the process of communication and influence it greatly. It is a wellknown fact that native speakers of English perceive Russian speech as "aggressive" while native Russian speakers perceive English speech as "haughty". It is determined by particular properties of Russian and English flows of speech. One could think of it as of some kind of "intonation illusion" (mere a manner of intonating). Nevertheless, it has obvious wave nature (which is physics) because every separate sound even if it has its approximate analog in a foreign language has different acoustic characteristics owing to a different articulation basis. There is also another important fact that cannot be but mentioned. Tongue and lip work influences the work of brain according to W.G. Penfield who discovered that our brain "saw" hands, lips and tongue best of all. Consequently, changing basic position of the tongue (switching to a foreign articulation basis), we use a brain resource that has not been used while speaking our mother tongue. This provides a student's mental readiness to understand foreign grammar structures.