Zaika L.A.

State Institution of Higher Education “National Mining University”, Ukraine

SOME WAYS OF PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING AT THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE LESSONS

A teacher plays a critical role in helping students receive systematic instruction in conceptual, strategic and reflective reasoning in the context of a discipline that will ultimately make them more successful in later investigations. Gallagher suggests that teachers give voice to metacognitive questions and insert them into the classroom dialogue so that students learn to attend to them, appreciate their utility, and then adopt their use as they become increasingly independent and self-directed.

Wilkerson claims that problem-based learning is characterized by a student-centered approach, teachers as facilitators rather than disseminators, and open-ended problems (these are called “ill-structured”) that serve as the initial stimulus and framework for learning. The term “ill-structured” is used to describe open-ended problems that have multiple solutions and require students to look at many methods before deciding on a particular solution.

“Ill-structured problems” help students learn a set of important concepts, ideas and techniques according to Gallagher because they provoke group discussion and give students experience solving problems listed by experts in the field. Students recognize these problems as professionally relevant. Therefore, students are more likely to be motivated to work on them (as opposed to discrete problem sets or textbook exercises), not only because they realize that the knowledge they gain by thinking about these problems will be useful in future, but also because students are typically given significant opportunities for creativity and flexibility in solving problem-based learning problems.

The functions of the problem-based learning are the following ones:-to form interest to the studies of a certain material at the stage of setting the aim and motivation of cognitive activity;

-to urge to self-dependent work in the process of mastering the content of learning at the stage of awareness and mastering;

-to urge to use knowledge, master the ways of activity, to use them in new situation at the stage of consolidation of the learnt information; feedback and reflection on the learning process and group dynamics are essential components of problem-based learning. Students are considered to be active agents who engage in social knowledge construction. Problem-based learning assists in processes of creating meaning and building personal interpretations of the world, based on e3xperiences and interactions;

-to find out the levels of mastering the content of education, activeness, and self-dependency as a certain integrity at the stage of control of the learning and cognitive activity.

Problem-based learning promotes students’ confidence in their problem-solving skills and strives to make them self-directed learners. These skills can put problem-based learning students at an advantage in future courses and in their careers. While such confidence does not come immediately, it can be fostered by good instruction. Teachers who provide a good learning community in the classroom, with positive teacher – student and student – student relationships, give students a sense of ownership over their learning, develop relevant and meaningful problems and learning methods, and empower students with valuable skills that will enhance students’ motivation to learn and ability to achieve.

According to the degree of cognitive independence of students, problem-based learning is carried out in three main forms: problematic character of presentation, partial searching activity and independent research activity.

During problem-based presentation a teacher, having set a problem, opens up the way of its solution, demonstrates the flow of scientific thinking for students, forces students to follow dialectic way of thinking up to the truth, makes students participants of the research.

Students are presented with a problem and through discussion within their group activate their knowledge. Within their group, they develop possible theories or hypotheses to explain the problem. Together they identify learning issues to be researched. They construct a shared primary model to explain the problem at hand. Facilitators provide scaffold, which is a frame work on which students can construct knowledge relating to the problem. After the initial team work, the students have to work in self-directed study to research the identified issues. The students re-group to discuss their findings and refine their initial explanations based on what they learned. Problem-based learning follows a constructivist perspective in learning as the role of the instructor is to guide and challenge the learning process rather than strictly providing knowledge.

A teacher leads the students to contradictions and proposes students to find the way to solve the problem independently; clashes contradictions of practical activity; presents different points of view concerning one and the same question; provokes students to make compariso9ns, generalizations, conclusions from situations, compares facts; asks questions (for generalizations, substantiation, concrete definition, logic of thinking); defines problem, theoretic and practice tasks (for example, partly searching or researching); sets research tasks (for example, with insufficient or excessive data, with contradictive data, making mistakes consciously etc.).

In conditions of partial searching activity, a teacher leads the work with the help of special questions provoking students to think over independently, to find actively the answers to separate parts of the problem. Research activity is an independent students’ search of solution of problem.

Technology of problem-based learning facilitates not only opportunity to obtain the necessary system of knowledge, abilities and skills, but to achieve the high level of their intellectual development, to form ability for independent mastering knowledge by the students by the way of their own creative activity, to develop interest to educational work, and to ensure substantial results of learning.