Филологические науки/1. Методика преподавания языка и литературы
ст.
преподаватель Лазухина Л.В.
Костанайский государственный университет
им. А. Байтурсынова, Казахстан
The problems of professionally-oriented foreign language teaching at
non-linguistic faculties
Currently, in the
study of a foreign language the State Educational Standard of higher education
requires taking into account the professional specifics with a focus on tasks
of graduates’ future careers. Thus, the purpose of professionally-oriented
foreign language teaching is to develop the readiness for professional foreign
language intercultural communication, providing the ability to generate,
interpret the information in a foreign language and operate it.
Especially
important is the professionally-oriented approach to teaching a foreign
language at non-linguistic faculties of universities. This approach involves
the formation as students’ capacity to foreign language communication in
specific professional, business and scientific spheres and situations, as well
as the ability to extract the necessary and relevant information of a
professional nature by reading specialist and scientific literature in a
foreign language. Thus it is necessary to take into account that if at
linguistic faculties a foreign language is a special base, then in other
universities it is an application to a common culture that is why at non-
linguistic departments the statement of the final objective requires a
specification. In addition, practical
second language acquisition is only one aspect of professionally-oriented
learning, as a foreign language must be not only the object of learning, but also
a means of development of professional skills. This involves the expansion of
the concept "professional orientation" of foreign language teaching,
which up to now included one component – a professionally-oriented focus on the
content of the training material.
Thus,
professionally-oriented training provides professional orientation not only of
educational content, but also of activities including methods and operations
that form the professional skills. The professional orientation of the
activity, firstly, requires the integration of the discipline "Foreign
Language" with the majors; secondly, poses before a foreign language
teacher the problem of teaching a future specialist on the basis of
interdisciplinary connections using a foreign language as a means of regular
replenishment of their expertise, as well as a means of formation of
professional skills; thirdly, involves the use of forms and methods capable of
forming the necessary professional skills of future specialists. As a result,
several problems emerge in the process of teaching professionally-oriented
foreign language.
At Kostanay State
University named after A. Baitursynov the discipline “Professionally-oriented
foreign language” has being taught for three years. In the course of classes our foreign language teachers also were
faced with some problems and difficulties, common to other educational
institutions.
First of all, due
to the lack of experience and expertise teachers face a number of difficulties:
psychological, linguistic, methodological, etc.
Certainly, the
teacher of the professionally oriented foreign language must learn the basics
of specialty, basic professional vocabulary, and navigate the terminology. It
is indisputable that the lack of basic training at the teacher leads to a
distortion of meaning in the translation of texts or accentuation on not
important information from the perspective of the specialist. In fact, people,
teaching professionally-oriented foreign language, get only the linguistic and
pedagogical education and do not possess specific professional vocabulary,
often have no idea of communicative needs inherent to the profession. This is
because currently there is no special training for teachers of foreign
languages for non-linguistic faculties.
At our university
we could undertake some attempts to teach professionally-oriented foreign
language by teachers of the specialty disciplines, who know foreign languages,
but it could be only within the framework of self-education.
Another important
problem is the lack of relevant textbooks and manuals, along with the lack of
copy machines. This creates an inconvenience and difficulties, both in teaching
and in the perception of educational material. To solve this problem, our
teachers are building up guidance and electronic manuals, though they are often
based on existing manuals and textbooks written long ago and containing
outdated information and do not reflect the current state of science and
technology.
It should be noted
that one of the basic requirements of a modern foreign language program for
non-linguistic faculties is the realization of the communicative method of
teaching. This applies to teaching professionally oriented foreign language
too, as it is assumed that the future specialist has a good opportunity to
participate in various international events: scientific symposiums,
conferences, meetings, etc., to negotiate, to exchange experience and to take
part in other forms of professional communication.
However, the
implementation of the communicative approach is also associated with certain
difficulties. This is an insufficient number of training hours devoted to the
discipline "Professionally-oriented foreign language", as well as
insufficient level of general language proficiency of students. That is why
more attention is given to reading and discussion of texts on specialty.
There are other
several ways to address the emerging challenges:
- to use for
foreign language classes materials that introduce the basic concepts of
specialty, as often teachers in specialty
do not pay enough attention to the basics of the profession;
- to create at the
lessons of foreign language situations in which students could use the
theoretical knowledge in the specialty for solving practical problems;
- to use materials
already known to students, but presented from a different perspective;
- to be prepared
that students can correct teacher’s mistakes;
- to use the
assistance of teachers in specialty as for preparation for classes, and during
their implementation ("teaching team").
- to pay more
attention along with the development of communication skills to the teaching of
reading specialized texts of scientific and professional character, annotation
and abstracting of the reads to extract and concise the information in
specialty.
Hence in summary
one of the main tasks for non-linguistic faculties of universities is to train
students to use knowledge of a foreign language in their future professional
activity, namely: to teach the future specialist information retrieval and
reading scientific texts on a particular branch of knowledge, ie, to read and
understand the contents of the texts in their specialty without a dictionary.
What
about teaching students for a limited period
of training framework to talk about the problems of
the specialty and to understand the speech of native speakers requires the
combination of traditional and innovative methods.
There are many new technologies, methods and
techniques which can help to fulfill this task. Professionally-oriented communication can
occur in formal and informal
settings, in
the form of interviews with foreign colleagues, presentations at meetings, conferences, group discussions,
writing business
letters and e-mail.
One of the modern useful techniques is a foreign language portfolio. The word «portfoliо» is derived from French porter -
carry and feuille - sheet. This is a compilation of works
and revisions collected by a foreign language learner over a given period of
time. It is a document in which those who are learning or have learned a language
can record and reflect on their language learning and cultural experiences. A
portfolio enhances the development of learner’s productive activities as well
as his/her personal development as a participant of an educational process.
Another efficient way is the use of project-based
learning.
The combination of all these methods and technics is
very effective and can help to improve the process of teaching
professionally-oriented foreign language and give good results, although it
requires great efforts from a teacher.
References
1 Гальскова Н.Д. Современная методика обучения
иностранному языку: пособие для учителя / Н.Д. Гальскова.- М.: АРКТИ-Глосса,
2000. - 165 с.
2 Матухин Д.Л. Профессионально-ориентированное
обучение иностранному языку студентов нелингвистических специальностей / Д.Л.
Матухин // Язык и культура.-2011. - № 2
(14). - Стр. 121-129.
3 Образцов П.И. Профессионально-ориентированное
обучение иностранному языку на неязыковых факультетах вузов / П.И. Образцов,
О.Ю. Иванова. - Орел: ОГУ, 2005. - 114 с.
4 Иванченко Т. Ю.
Motivation in Foreign Language Learning by Means of Portfolio [Электронный ресурс], -http://www.moluch.ru/archive/38/4340/
5 Кучерявая
Т. Л. Проблемы профессионально-ориентированного обучения иностранному языку
студентов неязыковых специальностей [Электронный ресурс], -http://www.moluch.ru/conf/ped/archive/21/1783/
6 Yutskevych A.P.
Problems of teaching professionally oriented foreign language
[Электронный ресурс], -http://en.shram.kiev.ua/lib/144_46_1_35.shtml