Педагогические науки/ 2. Проблемы подготовки специалиста
Ніколаєнко
О.В.,
Ушата
Т.О.,
Чернігівській державний
інститут економіки і управління
SOME
PECULIARITIES OF TEACHING FOREIGN LANGUAGES TO THE STUDENTS OF NON-LINGUISTIC
SPECIALITIES
Current conditions of the development of Ukraine are
characterized by extending of economic, technical, political, social and
cultural bonds with foreign countries. That’s why it’s necessary to make
reforms in all those spheres. The necessity to know a foreign language for a
specialist having higher education is very important nowadays, when
professional training of specialists able to enter into cooperation with
foreign enterprises and entrepreneurs using various forms of oral and written
communication, is urgent. So current Ukraine’s development, recovery of
cooperation with other countries on different levels require training of
high-skilled specialists, being able to orientate themselves in business world.
Therefore the requirements to specialists are enhancing. They involve not only
good professional knowledge and skills but also foreign language skills, as modern
specialist gains new professional information through foreign sources. Thus,
learning foreign languages favours such spheres of professional activity as
familiarization with innovative technologies and scientific approaches and
trends, innovations in education and science; establishing business relations
with foreign partners, enterprises and educational establishments; improving
professional competence level of specialists. All these things prove that
knowing foreign languages has become the necessity of modern society.
Traditionally learning foreign languages at a
non-linguistic higher educational establishment was directed toward reading,
comprehension and translation of special texts, and also toward learning the
issues of scientific style syntax. Nowadays it’s necessary to think of giving
emphasis to developing speech conversational habits on professional topics and
leading scientific discussions.
Though, teaching foreign languages to students of
non-linguistic specialities at higher educational establishments has some
peculiarities, and thus needs reviewing many factors. Students of
non-linguistic specialities often don’t understand the sense of mastering a foreign
language along with other professional subjects, and therefore have a very low
motivation for learning foreign languages. Thus the problem of searching new
effective methods of teaching foreign languages arises. So we’d like to analyze
some active methods of teaching foreign languages which are to increase the
students’ motivation to learning languages, stimulate the formation of foreign
communicative competence and promote students’ professional and personal
growth, and also explore the peculiarities of study directed to communication and
its influence on students’ cognitive motivation. A communication-oriented
teaching is aimed at providing students not only with practical knowledge of
grammar and vocabulary but also at developing their understanding of the ways
of using it for communication. Mastering a foreign language at a higher
educational establishment is considered as gaining communicative competence on
the basis of a linguistic competence which has been formed before. Teaching the
students of non-linguistic specialities foreign languages means not only
teaching them to substitute the elements of their mother tongue for the foreign
ones, but also teaching them to think using a foreign language. Thinking in a
foreign language presupposes having sufficient vocabulary, knowing the rules,
having the “feeling” of a foreign language and the ability to communicate in
spite of the lack of knowledge.
Having minimal amount of foreign language classes at
non-linguistic higher educational establishments we have to devote them
primarily to learning the selected grammar and vocabulary materials, that is to
forming the students’ linguistic competence first of all, and also to teaching
professional reading. It’s very important but also very difficult to develop sufficient
oral speech communicative competence of students of non-linguistic specialities
at higher educational establishments, the more so because the first-year
students’ level of foreign language skills is usually rather low. Thus low
level of language skills bears some anxiety, as the student is not sure and
feels lack of knowledge to express his thoughts. The student is afraid of
getting bad marks and of being mocked by his group mates. This may lead to low self-concept
and may spoil the efforts. Thereby many students can get the “internal
resistance” to the language.
At the same time a teacher should solve the problem of
searching methods and techniques to overcome the so called “language barriers”,
increase psychological comfort of learning process and mastering a foreign
language. We consider it reasonable to use games at foreign language classes.
Such games will help to form basic speech models, the ability to ask and answer
the questions, to express own thoughts, to form own communicative intention,
that is to order, suggest, argue, deny, agree etc. From the psychological point
of view, using games at foreign language classes at non-linguistic higher
educational establishments is an effective way of attracting, concentrating and
keeping attention, because games take away the psychological barrier of fear to
communicate and give the opportunity to use the language in real life
situations, promote students’ motivation. Selecting such games it’s necessary
to take into account their novelty, dynamics, correspondence to students’
professional needs, communicative orientation, and the element of competition
being present. The teacher should also take into account such factors as the
level of controlling the students (complete, partial, and minimal), providing
the students with some references (helping to make a statement), choosing the
correspondent organizational structure (pair or group work). Such games don’t
take too much time but promote students’ communicative foreign activity, relieve
the stress, improve the psychological climate in the group.
Learning foreign languages by the students of
non-linguistic specialities at higher educational establishments is directed on
mastering a foreign language for specific purposes. It presupposes the foreign
language teachers’ ability to combine students’ general knowledge and skills of
the foreign language with their professional knowledge of the certain branch of
science or industry. Useful teaching aids in this case will be special original
texts, scientific articles, reports, monographs etc. T.P.Blahodarna singles out
the following tasks for students while reading professionally-oriented
literature in a foreign language: getting information which will supplement and
extend the material professional academic disciplines; acquiring some skills
necessary for independent reading of professional literature [2].
Cognitive-communicative approach is gaining popularity in reading professional
literature nowadays. That is not only the ability to read a foreign text, but
also further usage of information from this text (writing summary, making a
plan, oral retelling etc.
H.V. Barabanova has worked out a scheme of an
educational cycle for teaching professional reading. It includes the following
stages: a) before reading introduction of the vocabulary –the communicative
task is to form a topical terminological minimum, b) independent reading of authentic
professional text - the communicative task is to make a primary semantization
of the text, c) classroom reading, followed by the series of exercises to the
text - the communicative task is text comprehension, d) work on the
functional-composition structure of the text - the communicative task is
complete understanding of the content with the following annotation of the
text.
Business and cultural bonds with foreign countries
require from the modern specialists the ability to carry on a business
correspondence. Thus, it’s necessary to teach the students to observe language etiquette
of written text, which includes using officialese or set expressions to express
their communicative intentions and to observe the rules of politeness. Taking
into consideration a very little amount of foreign language classes for the
students of non-linguistic specialities, there’s no opportunity to teach them
theory, but the teacher can provide the students with the list of
conversational phrases for expressing typical communicative intentions. At the
same time it’s better to teach the students to carry on a business
correspondence citing the examples.
Conversational skills development will be promoted by
the diversity of cooperation. It’s necessary to organize not only pair work but
also group cooperation. It’s also advisable to use personal-group conversation,
i.e. making reports or presentations before the audience. It’s reasonable to
make constant changes in conversational conditions, content etc. We should also
mention the necessity of choosing the topic of conversation. It must be urgent
up-to-date and interesting for students; as the more the students speak a
foreign language, the sooner their inner foreign speech will stop be hindered
by their native one.
I.V.Koval claims that the progress in studying foreign
languages, other subjects and the ability to fluent communication are closely
connected [3]. The greater progress the student has in foreign languages and
other subjects, the better conversationist he is.
All these issues prove that interactive, intensive
methods of teaching foreign languages promote the development of inner
motivation for studying foreign languages, though we’ve mentioned only some of
them. So the task of foreign language teachers is to create such comfortable
conditions for learning the language, which will give the students the
opportunity to show interest, initiative, independence.
Literature:
1.
Барабанова Г.В. Методика навчання
професійно-орієнтованого читання в немовному ВНЗ / Г.В.Барабанова. – Київ:
ІНКОС, 2005. – 315 с.
2.
Благодарна Т.П. Розвиток навичок роботи з професійно-орієнтованими текстами на
початковому етапі вивчення іноземної мови / Т.П. Благодарна//Викладання мов у
вищих навчальних закладах освіти на сучасному етапі. Міжпредметні зв’язки;
Наукові дослідження. Досвід. Пошуки: Збірник наукових праць. Харківський національний університет
ім. В.Н.
Каразіна. Вип. 12. – X., 2008. – С. 65 – 70.
3.
Коваль І.В. Психологічні ефекти спільної діяльності під час вивчення німецької мови
/ І.В.Коваль//Проблеми загальної та педагогічної психології: Збірник наукових праць
Інституту психології ім. Г.С. Костюка АПН України /За ред. С.Д.Максименка.
T.VI, Вип. 8. – К., 2004. – С.150-157.
4. Allwright, R.L. The importance of interaction in
Classroom Language Learning / R.L. Allwright // Applied Linguistics, # 5/2,
2007. – P. 156-171