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Procedía - Social and Behavioral Sciences 191 (2015) 2250 - 2253
WCES 2014
Technology of Students' Professional Competences Formation While Teaching a Foreign Language
Irina G. Kondratevaa, Agzam A. Valeeva*
aKazan (Volga Region) Federal University, Institute of Language, Kremlevskaya str, no.35, 420008, Kazan, Russia
Abstract
The Russian education system nowadays passes a reforming stage, influencing a transition of state standards of higher education to a competence-based format. It means definitions, classification, the contents and estimation of competences are specified. While teaching a foreign language it is possible to form and improve not only proficiency in language and culture, but professional communication of future specialists, to develop initiative personality, ability to work in a team and getting ready to life-long learning. Pedagogical monitoring of higher institutions entrants' communicative, organizational, reflexive, informational and other general and educational skills level came back with rather low results. This paper introduces the technology of teaching a foreign language in order to form professional competences. The technology involves the use of technological cards to train self-determination, cognitive, analytical and practical abilities. For monitoring their professional competences, their levels of motivation, their progress and changes in behavior, students themselves imply the proposed indicators.
© 2015 TheAuthors.PublishedbyElsevierLtd.This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.Org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of WCES 2014 Keywords: professional competences, foreign language, technology of teaching languages
1. Introduction
World globalization is accompanied by increasing mobility of specialists and a stream of knowledge, it makes new demands to the personality who has to be not only highly educated and dynamic, but also multicultural, tolerant, competent, ready to prompt changes in the society, capable to estimate cross-cultural and language situations, and to be able to apply his/her knowledge rationally and competently (Valeeva, 2011). Representatives of business,
* Agzam A. Valeev Tel.: +7-909-308-6220 E-mail address: valeev.jset@yandex.ru
1877-0428 © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of WCES 2014 doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.04.313
industry and education declare that the professional at the present stage is not only a narrow expert in a certain area, but an initiative personality, able to work in team, be ready to continuous development, with communicative abilities, high level of proficiency in language and culture. Respectively, the responsibility of higher educational institutions for training new type of specialists increases.The analysis of an existing condition of the system of training foreign languages in higher educational institution has allowed revealing contradictions:
• Between the increased requirements to high-quality vocational and language training of future expert and university graduates inappropriate to the social order;
• Between traditional practice of use of a foreign language, the standard methods of training a foreign language at non- language faculties and need of the pedagogical technology integrating formation of not only the language, but also professional competences of future experts according to inquiries of modern society.
Found contradictions allow existence of a problem: what are the technological bases, design and realization of training a foreign language at non- language faculties of higher education institution? Pedagogical experiment took place during teaching and educational process at faculties of the Russian philology, history, mathematics, physics of the Tatar state University of Humanities and Pedagogic and had three stages: stating, forming and generalizing, each of which solved certain problems. Eight groups from 1 and 2 courses of philological, historical, mathematical and physical faculties were involved in experiment: 3 control (43 students) and 5 experimental (88 students). For collecting, storage, processing of research the system of pedagogical monitoring was developed. The structure of pedagogical monitoring included: Level of educational training of students (supervision, testing, questioning and the following methodic (Markova, 1996); Psychological climate in groups (Lutoshkin, 1981; Dyachenko, Kandybovich, 1987); Level of formation of communicative, organizing, information, regulatory competences (supervision, testing, questioning (Batarshev, 1999; Rogov, 1996; Shchedrovitsky, 1974 ); Personal qualities of students (supervision, testing, questioning (Kondrateva, 2009). Results of pedagogical experiment showed that students:
• Feel keen interest in personality, self-knowledge;
• Have low level of proficiency in planning, goal-setting and reflection;
• Can treat unfairly critically statements, sometimes draw hasty conclusions;
• Aren't able to criticize structurally, without convincing arguments when upholding the point of view;
• Not always correctly build the statement;
• Have difficulties with summarizing, annotation and compression of information;
• Find work in team interesting, however prefer to direct, instead of to cooperate and submit.
There was need and in purposeful pedagogical activities for improvement and formation of components of communicative and professional competences of future professionals while teaching a foreign language. After development of the system of pedagogical monitoring, analyses of results of pedagogical experiment, organization of the teaching process on the basis of pedagogical technology of formation and improvement of professional competences of future experts was begun.
2. Organization of the teaching process
In activity of the teacher working on this technology, two stages are allocated: design stage and stage of realization of educational process. The design stage is connected with development of the technological card of training of self-determination, cognitive, analytical and practical trainings. The critical relation to own behavior and activity becomes the first step on a way of formation and improvement of professional competences. During self-determination training students learn to care about their social behavior. It is necessary to concentrate attention on the identity of the student to open his personal potential. Regular identification of opinions and interests is carried out by means of exercise called "Express information". In essence students prepare a short message on an interesting event within a studied topic in English for each class. Students' information begins with: "As far as I know ..." /" It is known that ... /" I suppose ..." /I believe ... / "I think ...". The efficiency of this exercise is in the following: students improve special abilities in the field of grammar, phonetics and lexicon, broaden horizons since they are compelled to watch events in our country and abroad; study to select and transfer information, and the teacher receives additional data on interests of students, their emotional and estimated judgments. This exercise creates a condition under which the student gets knowledge not only from the teacher, but also from other sources, so there is an interesting exchange of knowledge. Experience of teaching of a foreign language allows drawing a conclusion -
the beginning of the lesson is one of its major stages and in many respects defines success of it. The function of a teacher at this stage is to allow the student to enter into the atmosphere of foreign-language communication. Thus, use of external and internal motives of the speech excludes artificiality of students' statements that promote formation of communicative competence. Friendly tone of the teacher, as well as respect for the personal dignity of each of student creates a comfortable atmosphere in the lesson. Carrying out this exercise without spending extra time allows entering lesson's perspective, to motivate students, to repeat lexical material and to fix new grammatical structures, to train skills of discussion, etc. Self-determination training traditionally begins with express information, and then comes the transition to speech exercises. Expression or a statement is offered to students for discussion, they have to express a consent or disagreement according to the scheme: thesis - argument - summary. Future experts show a free initiative, exchange opinions; different points of view are allocated. After discussion or conversation students make up an association scheme. They are offered to express their associations regarding the material. This exercise promotes formation of both special abilities and abilities to the analysis, synthesis, generalization, systematization and shows trainees' knowledge level. By making comments and discussing these association schemes students agree that their knowledge is constructed on stereotypic representations. For continuation of discussion it is necessary to enter new linguistic material. For self-determination and formation of abilities in the field of audition students are offered to listen to a text. After listening students state and prove their point of view, using speech patterns: I fully agree ... /I completely agree .../I disagree ... /I don't agree.../; It's known that ... /As for me .... After that students "create a subject portrait" by means of lexicon and making comments on it. The objectives of training are achieved: students define the knowledge of studied theme, compare received information with available life experience, are able to state and prove their opinion and demonstrate the knowledge of a new linguistic material. The main goal of cognitive and analytical training is formation of communicative competence, critical thinking and tolerance which are considered as the contrasts and which are in indissoluble unity at the same time. Language development, aimed essentially at solving only narrow practical problems actually performs an essential function of training scientific-minded person (Scherba, 1974). A teacher has to select texts carefully. The obligatory requirement to texts is their authenticity. Purposeful selection of the texts promotes formation of the figurative concepts relating to background knowledge. Reading promotes brain-work in terms of development the most, as it demands mobilization of all intellectual abilities and emotional experiences. The first stage is motivation to work with the text, updating of students' personal experience, forecasting content of the text with a support of trainees' knowledge and their life experience. We fully agree with Kolb's theory 'experiential learning' which emphasizes that experience plays in the learning process the central role and understanding is formed and re-formed through experience (Kolb, 2005). During this stage the linguistic material is repeated, the new one is entered and fixed on. The second stage is reading the text. During reading students write out keywords, phrases; find the facts confirming or disproving the main idea; define quantity of the facts stated in the text; distribute the facts based on degree of their importance; reveal emotional words, generalize content of the text. The last stage assumes use of the contents of the text for development of students' abilities in oral and written language. The following tasks are offered: divide the text into semantic parts; make the plan to each part; reduce or simplify the text, using periphrasis for its best reproduction. For development of abilities of reproductive and productive characters, trainees reproduce and interpret the text; state the judgments using arguments from the text; estimate information. So, cognitive and analytical training is aimed at the development of all-educational abilities and formation of professional competences (Gonzi, Hager, & Athanasou, 1993). Training of practical abilities is the final stage of work on a subject, shows and checks to what students learned. Carrying out this training is preceded by a big preparatory work. Out-of-class independent work of students which promotes self-development of the personality is of great importance, teaches a reflection, a goal-setting, planning and the organization of activity for achievement of the purpose. At the end the results are summed up. Students demonstrate practical abilities on the studied theme in the form of a role-playing game as it even more promotes activation of their reserve opportunities. Preparing for training of practical abilities, students select and analyze a material from different sources, develop the program of speech and nonverbal behavior: think over their "legend", select nonverbal means of communication. The role-playing game is followed by an analytical stage. Special attention is paid to development of ability to reflect upon. The performance of participants, a role in game, reasons of progress and failures are analyzed, and contribution of everyone is estimated. It is necessary to tell that at the final stage of work on a theme besides a role-playing game, "a round table", "sketch" and discussion methods are used. Increase of motivation of students to learn a foreign language, their progress and their changes in behavior allow confirming the efficiency of offered technology of formation and improvement of professional competences of future experts.
3. Conclusions
Formation and improvement of professional competences of future experts - is a rather long and difficult process, mainly because it is preceded by two essential periods - the period of accumulation of a cognitive component and the period of the analysis of knowledge. Nevertheless, the conducted research gives the grounds to claim that in the educational process of modern higher education institution, a successful formation of professional competences in students is indeed possible.
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