Pedagogy/5.
Up-to-date techniques of teaching
Candidate in Pedagagigal Sciiences, Associate
Professor
Orynkul Zhumadillayeva
S.Seifullin Agro Technical University, Astana,
Kazakhstan
The Ways of Developing the Academic Writing Skills
in Polylingual Groups of Technical Higher Schools
The
reforms taking place in the society, science, economics, connected with the new
types of professional activity cause educational policy and new visions of a
role of education in the Republic of Kazakhstan. At present, in the system of
higher education a special attention is paid to the professional-oriented
training of a foreign language. The specialist’s skills of written intercourse
in a foreign language play an important role in the course of making business,
professional and scientific contacts. In this regard, one of the main tasks of
foreign-language training of students of technical colleges is development of
academic writing skills in a foreign language. [1]
Since
2012-2013 academic year at S. Seifullin Kazakh Agro Technical University the
program of developing polylingual education is introduced, which is directed at
creation of continuous multilevel step-by-step polylingual training of the
students of Bachelor and Master degrees on the specialities, as
"Biotechnology", "Ecology", “Transport equipment and technology” , "Forest resources and
forestry", “Machine engineering
and Equipment” ,
"Technology of the food industry", "Computer facilities and the
software", etc. and in this connection, polylingual groups on the
mentioned specialties are created, as well the disciplines "Professional
Kazakh (Russian) language" and "Professional foreign language"
are included into the standard curricula of undergraduate studies. The aim of
this program is realization of the polylingual education targeted at training
of highly qualified, competitive specialists of the agrarian specialties
possessing language competence on the basis of parallel mastering Kazakh,
Russian and English languages, who are mobile in the international educational
space and labor market, capable of cross-cultural communication. For realizing
this task the important contribution will be made by improving of practical
focus on vocational training in the field of academic writing, as the academic writing
is an important component of speech activity in the majority of professions
today, and also, the academic writing (for example, in English) in interaction
with reading, speaking and listening creates the corresponding integrative
qualities as system, integrity and complexity of speech activity of future
expert’s professional formation. [2]
Students’
level of proficiency in a foreign language is different, accordingly, the
exercises used in the course of training should differ depending on it. To
teach students to set out their thoughts in writing correctly, we have to teach
them:
-
to write and use the lexical units ( nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc) in the
professional context correctly;
-
to clause correctly, from simple to compound and complex sentences;
-
to construct a correct paragraph and text as a whole. [3]
When
training the course "Academic writing" teachers familiarize students
with various samples of texts; teach to express the thoughts in writing,
relying on these samples by narrating, reasoning and composing. At the end of
the course students learn some genres of the academic writing as an abstract, a
summary, a paper, an essay, a scientific article; acquire skills of the
analysis of scientific articles; form the skills of writing essays, papers and
summaries to scientific articles independently, etc.
When
teaching the academic writing, it is necessary to take into account that it is
based on two approaches: a) the product approach to the teaching of writing; b)
the process approach to the teaching of writing. [4]
The
first approach, called “the text approach”, means use of the ready text as a
sample or a template. The stages of work can be in the following order: a) a
sample text; b) its comprehension, the analysis and work on the text at the
level of lexical units and the content; c) writing an identical text. This
approach has both positive and negative sides. The positive side is that when
learning the academic writing students have to take into consideration and
follow a format of using certain grammatical structures, lexical expressions of
scientific texts, but at the same time, development of writing skills can come
to simple copying of the text with replacement of some language templates that
does not develop student’s writing skills efficiently.
The
second approach, called "the process approach", is alternative to the
first one and is widely used abroad. The main attention is paid to the process
of writing a text, a chain of the cogitative operations which are fulfilled by
students, beginning with generation of ideas and information search, finishing
with making up own text. When using this approach students express their
thoughts easily, show creative activity unlike using a template model and
reproductive activity.
The
work experience with students shows that the majority of available training
materials are focused on reproductive written activity, i.e., on work with the
ready text, and standard academic texts of the same type cause the difficulties
that students face in free and creative expressing of their thoughts. The
typical mistakes that students make are: incomplete disclosure of the subject
of the text, inconsistency, lack or shortage of examples, bad description,
serious mistakes and scant vocabulary. The solution of this problem seems to be
in a skillful combination of the first and second approaches "the product
approach" and "the process approach", taking into account the
students’ level of proficiency in a foreign language and their individual characteristics.
In
groups of polylingual training at S. Seifullin Kazakh Agro Technical
University 33% of the core Curriculum
are conducted in the Kazakh, Russian and English languages respectively, and in
connection with transformation of the university into Kazakh Agro Technical Research University, there is a tendency to
strengthening of a research component in educational activity of students,
postgraduates and doctoral candidates. And it means that students,
postgraduates and doctoral candidates of polylingual groups have to write their
yearly essays, project works, reports and graduate works in English, take part
in the international conferences writing scientific articles or theses of
reports. It confirms once again the necessity of mastering the academic writing
skills, which plays an important role in developing both cognitive abilities -
to make hypotheses, to analyze information, etc., and language abilities - to
form a thought and to present it using language means.
Consequently,
development of academic writing skills should be systematic, purposeful, taking
into consideration the students’ level of proficiency in a foreign language and
their individual features that can promote the achievement of positive results
in developing all types of speech activity in whole.
Literature
1. Валеева Л.А., Сиразеева А.Ф., Морозова А.Ф. Развитие навыков академического письма у студентов неязыкового вуза //
Современные проблемы науки и образования. – 2015. – № 3; URL: www.science-education.ru/123-17956
2. Садыбекова С.И. Внедрение полиязычного образования в вузах
Казахстана: проблемы, перспективы // Полиязычное образование: теория и
методология. — Алматы: Наука, 2013. С.
157-162.
3. Jordan R.R. Academic Writing
Course. Pearson Education LTD. Longman. Third edition, 2001
4. Peet K. Teaching Academic Writing // Developing Teachers.com. A web site
for the developing web teacher [Electronic resources]. URL:
http://www.developingteachers.com/ articles_tchtraining/acadwrite1_kendall.htm