The transition to the knowledge-based economy requires a new generation of professionals with a complex set of skills and competencies. These include English language skills, which will help them to merge into the international professional community. One dimension of this challenge is finding effective unconventional approaches to mass EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teaching for nonlinguistic university students, to increase their motivation, interest in learning English, and their willingness to use this foreign language actively by lowering communication barriers. In this study, we investigate the effectiveness of an experimental EFL teaching and learning framework, aimed at helping non-linguistic majors students to develop an English communication competence through an artificial bilingual environment. Statistical analysis and comparison of the results of the students' surveys suggest that using more unconventional activities and a strong focus on students' social interactions, interdisciplinary language activities and heterogeneity of study groups, builds students' intrinsic motivation, removes communication barriers and increases the need to use English in real life.
Raising young professionals is one of the main goals of ESP teachers across the globe, but in today’s rapidly changing world it is complicated by the need to adapt learners to a demanding international working environment that puts heavy pressure on human resources. English communication skills are now sought by employers, so, English teachers worldwide need to help future graduates meet such high expectations. However, the practice has shown that options for improvement within national educational systems are limited. In artificially bilingual classrooms progress requires cooperation and networking of practitioners from different countries. This article presents the results of the first stage of an experimental collaborative educational project, which involved teachers and students from two state universities in Russia and Kazakhstan. It describes the beginning of implementing a relatively new pedagogical model for ESP teaching through designing a virtual crossborder learning environment simulating certain real-life professional communication situations. The aim of the paper is to analyze the initial impact of this model on developing certain soft skills and English communicative competence in the students of non-linguistic majors. The authors used the comparative analysis of data obtained through formal structured questionnaires. The statistical significance of the results was measured by the F-test and the paired Student’s t-test The results suggest that extending ESP learning environment beyond borders helps ESP teachers to shift from purely academic settings to simulating real professional scenarios, thus developing students’ English communicative competence, contributing to their professional socialization, and creating a sufficient level of stress to appeal to their motivation while avoiding discouragement.
The paper analyzes existing approaches to assessing the results of teaching foreign languages to the university students majoring in non-linguistic subjects with a special focus on the advantages of authentic assessment. The authors stress the state-level need to develop and implement effective assessment tools for ESL university teaching, and substantiate the effectiveness of authentic assessment for increasing students motivation to learn English. They identify advantages of authentic assessment, including a possibility to track individual students learning progress, to effectively use peer assessment and self-assessment, to focus on students performance indicators, to create a success effect, and to present actual teaching and learning results or personal development achievements in the form of presentations, projects and other tangible accomplishments. The paper describes a unified system of control, assessment and evaluation of ESL teaching and learning results, developed by Foreign Languages for Students of Humanities Department at Petrozavodsk State University (Russia) for modeling a foreign-language environment and enhancing students language socialization. The authors give a detailed account of establishing procedures for the assessment of speaking and writing skills, and analyze a didactic potential of a foreign language portfolio as one of authentic assessment tools. They come to the conclusion that peer assessment, self-assessment and other authentic assessment methods help to shift the focus from teaching to learning and create optimal conditions for student-centered education process.
This article focuses on one of the particular problems associated with the gradual transition to a hybrid model of learning in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, which is that students, who regularly use the Internet and other digital tools for everyday communication and entertainment, transfer their desire to remain anonymous to the virtual learning environment. The described empirical diagnostic study aims to compare students’ declared attitudes towards anonymity in virtual space with their actual actions in a partially digitized learning environment. It finds that students accustomed to digital inquiry tools and interaction channels transfer their desire for anonymity to the virtual learning environment and see many benefits in such anonymity, but state that it is impossible to apply the principle of anonymity to their learning processes. This contradiction points to the need for further research into this issue from psychological, social, cultural and philosophical perspectives.
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