This paper deals with the issues related to teaching the language of specialty. The authors consider that language teaching should be viewed from a broad perspective including individual factors which play a key role in choosing the methods of teaching. In language teaching it is necessary to take into account the real communicative needs and psychological peculiarities of the learners. The competently drawn up strategy of the work will enhance their motivation, initiatives, and acquisition of the managerial cycle; will promote the development of their imagination, analytical thinking and speech. Besides, it will lay down the foundation for using the Russian language for specific (professional) purposes of students and for enlarging their special knowledge on the subject.
Creating the optimal psychological conditions, using the effective methods of teaching and taking into account the individual potential of the learners will enable the teachers to form the basis of communicative competences of students in their professional sphere by promoting the implementation of their professional motivation.
Foreign students from the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, who get the basic language training at the Language and General Education Department, should be ready to study for a Master’s Degree program during a short period of time. The total training period lasts 9 months, out of which 5 months are assigned for mastering the discipline “Language of Specialty”.
The question is how to make the process of developing communicative competences more effective under the intensive regime. It is obvious that the efficiency of teaching depends on the competently chosen methods and methodological approaches to the process of teaching based on the real communicative needs as well as on individual and language potential of learners. Communicative needs of learners are to acquire knowledge, competences and skills, which will enable them to use the Russian language as the medium of professional activities for extending their professional knowledge.
The individual potential and individual characteristics of the members of the academic group are considered to be decisive in choosing the methods of teaching. This entails the following: a high degree of awareness of the learners as individuals, methods of organizing and implementing the educational, pedagogical activities, controlling of the learners progress and difficulties and methods of stimulating the academic and cognitive activities.
Now it is essential to get acquainted ‘closer’ with our learners. All of them got a higher education at the universities of Afghanistan on different specialties, i.e. they have already got a Bachelor Degree. Most of them speak English, have certain pedagogical experience, the average age of whom is 30. In the group there are only students from Afghanistan, all of them know Farsi and their mother tongue (Pashtu, Dari, Uzbek). These students are planning to study for a Master’s Degree Program and perhaps, they will continue their studies for a PhD degree in other countries where education is conducted in the Russian language. The fact that the learners know the language of specialty perfectly well is the essential positive point. But it is necessary for them to be adapted to a new language perception of the world, to plunge into it extending their professional knowledge in the language space mastered by them.
Thus, it is very important to be aware of the individual potential of learners, which will enable to choose more effective approach to teaching.
Two observations are required here:
The first is that there must be long-term purposes / aims of teaching: for the students of this category learning the language is of great practical significance in the future. It will be related with their future material well-being, which creates a powerful impetus in their activities. It is obvious that aims provide only a general direction while for achieving them it is necessary to involve an effective functioning of the personality.
The second is that there must be the individual self-regulation which is understood as “a high level of self-consciousness, adequate self-estimation, reflexive thinking and independence of a self-organized, purpose orientated and strong -willed personality”.[2;25]. In the course of the pedagogic activity the learners, to more or less extent, have developed these qualities. In the real academic process these qualities are expressed as:
- the ability to analyze educational tasks, including planning, setting aims and choosing the academic strategy;
- comprehension of the significance of personal results (self-estimate, self-correction);
- the ability to organize the independent cognizant
Certainly, not all the students are able to demonstrate these qualities to a full extent. Besides, there are some factors that complicate the academic process: psychological peculiarities of the age; educational and pedagogical experience with the stereotypes of the alien culture, adapting to a new perception of the language world – all of them require a certain period of time. Before the start of learning the language of specialty the Afghan students study the Russian language only for 3-4 months. The students realize that the level of knowledge of the Russian language is not sufficient for the effective coverage of the suggested material, and it may cause some panic and fear among them. Consequently, the teachers are to choose such strategies of work in order to help the learners avoid any kind of stress and start acquiring the new material consciously. The teachers must do their best to use effectively the individual potential of students.
In regard with this, the teachers at different stages must use different approaches to teaching. Not rejecting the traditional role of the teacher who is responsible for presenting the certain amount of knowledge, for forming and controlling the skills obtained by the learners, it is also desirable to use the elements of the individual centered teaching. This approach creates conditions for disclosing the personal individual potential of the student and promotes the establishment of partnership relations between the teacher and the learner, and no doubt, it will lead to a future success. In this case, as it was noted earlier, teachers have been inclined to assume that it was exclusively, or at least principally, those approaches which they controlled that had the greatest influence upon learners’ achievement.
Let’s characterize in general the main principles of the above mentioned didactic approach. The individual -centered language teaching based on the system of mutually connected notions, ideas and methods of activities promotes and supports the processes of self-assertion and self-realization of a personality of a student, development of his inimitable individuality. The individual – centered teaching is solidified by the subjective experience, i.e. it is focused on the emotionally valuable attitude of a learner to materials under study. The learner obtains not only subject skills but also general education knowledge, namely: determines the content, aims, forms of teaching/ learning activities: reflects and estimates the results of the process; gets the opportunities to influence the course of the academic activity by choosing the content of the teaching program, forms and techniques of teaching processes, etc. The student learns how to acquire knowledge and to use it independently. No doubt, this approach corresponds to the individual potential of the learners to a large extent.
Let’s see how the algorithm of organizing the academic process with the elements of the individual centered approach to teaching is presented.
The teacher together with the learners determines tasks and objectives of the entire course, jointly planning their future actions; if it is necessary they introduce some corrections (it depends on the objective conditions and language level of the group).
The organization of the academic process is carried out in such a way as to make the learners acknowledge what they are doing and what for. The unity of forms of controlling and criteria of assessment of all the types of speech activities of students throughout the course is the indisputable rule. It is necessary to make controlling as a stimulating factor of students for an active independent activity and forming an adequate self-assessment. The logical continuation of an adequate self-assessment is the ability to correct your own actions, i.e. to be able to acknowledge what can be changed in these actions in order to make the results correspond to the requirements.
The competently drawn up strategy of the work will enhance their motivation, initiatives and acquisition of the managerial cycle; will promote the development of their imagination, analytical thinking and speech. Besides, it will lay down the foundation for using the Russian language for specific (professional) purposes of students and for enlarging their special knowledge on the subject.
As it has been mentioned above, in the individual centered teaching the strongest point of the educational process of a foreign student is his independent work. The researchers define independent work as “the purpose oriented, internally motivated activity, structured by the subject himself through the jointly fulfilled actions and processes, and the results correlated with them. Its fulfillment requires a sufficient level of self-cognition, reflection, self-discipline, personal responsibility, which make the learner be satisfied with the process of self-perfection and self-cognition”. [2; 255]
We agree with N.A. Alexeev’s point of view that “internal motivation and possession of creative abilities are the main components of organizing creatively the process of getting to know”. To possess creative abilities means to think analytically and independently, to be easily adapted to new settings, to be able to see and find the problem, matter on his/ her own, and the ability to seek the ways of resolving these problems through critical thinking”. [1; 38]
While organizing the learner’s independent work, the teacher is facing the following tasks:
- to teach how to work on the textbook for the language of specialty: with speech patterns, types of assignments, texts, pictures, graphic map manuals (if necessary)
- to teach students how to plan their independent work for out-class time;
- to form skills and abilities for independent reading strategies;
- to teach the main techniques of work on the text;
- to teach how to make brief and rational notes (transcripts, plans, theses, notes, synopsis; abbreviations of words and phrases);
- to introduce the general ways of seeking information from various
Now we will state the main aims of teaching the language of specialty on this stage of teaching (the general language level of acquiring Russian –A2).
- Development of practical skills and abilities of recognizing and using the structural and semantic patterns characteristic of the scientific style of different janres in oral and written
- Formation of the mechanisms of constructing oral monologues, including the abilities of processing and preserving the obtained language knowledge, and the efficient usage of the language and speech materials in the given speech
- Development and perfection of skills of conducting dialogues on the suggested
- Consolidation of skills of oral speech in written form (by making notes, writing synopses, speeches, reports, )
The structure and the content of the types of scientific monologues, style and communicative peculiarities of the exact type of the monologue, and language means characteristic of the oral janre of the scientific speech are the main objects of the course study of the scientific style of speech.
Teaching the language of specialty to the future Master Degree students is of specific character, as teaching is conducted not in their mother tongue but in a foreign language which is learnt by them simultaneously. These learners are put in a certain professional area and have some national specific experience in the educational and professional activity. The process of acquiring the new language picture of the world is accompanied by a high level of motivation. The creation of the optimal psychological conditions, the usage of the appropriate methods of teaching, and taking into account the individual potential of learners will enable to form the basis of the communicative competences of students in the professional sphere by promoting the realization of their professional motivation.
- N.A. Alexeev, 2006. Individual – Centered Teaching: Theory and Practice. Monograph: 332pp. Tynmen.
- I.A. Zymnyaya. 2000. Pedagogical Psychology. Second Edition: revised. M.,Logos:384pp.
- Brown, H. Douglas. The Modern Language Journal. pp218-220.