Motivation as a concept, motivating factors and the role of the teacher in the motivation mix have received considerable attention lately. Tertiary students seem to be the ones who have potent intrinsic motivation simply because completing a degree is not compulsory. Nevertheless, motivation is seen to be directly related to learners' performance and achievement. Thus, the study attempted to explore motivating factors for tertiary students in a specific educational setting -in a college where they are supposed to take up two foreign languages and study them both from scratch (or at best to continue one from of them from an intermediary level) simultaneously, the task made more challenging by the fact that the major language is an Oriental or an African one. Therefore, the aim of the study was to question the students about their perception of the motivating factors, including the importance of the figure of a teacher and the teacher type related to authoritarianism versus a more democratic management style; gender-related differences, if any, were of particular interest, as well as those concerning particular languages, namely European languages vs oriental ones. For this purpose, a questionnaire was devised, printed out and distributed among the students. The responses, which were given in the teachers' absence, were subsequently collected and analysed. The results of the survey suggest that intrinsic motivation is indeed the prevalent form of motivation for tertiary students in both Oriental/African and West European language, though the role of the teacher and relevant interesting materials and topics for discussion help foster the intrinsic motivation. A more democratic style of class management is seen by the students as preferable and more conducive to language learning.
The topicality of the study is determined by the discord between the foreign language teaching standards in Russian universities and undergraduate and graduate students’ requirements oriented towards the modern labour market. Having obtained a specialty, university graduates may work in different fields or change their job profile altogether; the borders of professions and professional standards are undergoing changes as well. The aim of the study is to show the necessity to transform foreign language teaching standards at the university level in accordance with the recent and ongoing changes in the job market. The hypothesis of the study is that foreign language teaching standards in Russia should integrate communicative competence, critical and creative thinking, and learning to learn as necessary components. It is suggested that students of non-philological specialties should be taught two or three foreign languages instead of only advancing their command of English. The hypothesis was confirmed by the polls conducted among undergraduate and graduate students of the College of Asian and African Studies (CAAS, Lomonosov MSU), over 2019-2020. The study resulted in developing a new standard of teaching foreign languages at the CAAS, which includes teaching two European languages alongside an oriental/African one, and creating a new structure of the English language course oriented towards developing soft skills rather than a purely linguistic component. Thus, the study seeks to substantiate the need for the new standard by the requirements of the modern job market and graduates’ demands. Creating the new standard targeting soft skills development and teaching two European languages is a practical result of this work.
The main aim of the study is to substantiate a new foreign language teaching standard in the universities of Russia closing the gap between the standards and the modern job market demands. In order to achieve this aim it is necessary to define the vector of the changes and correlate them with the bachelor and master students’ requirements. The main changes which the modern labor market is undergoing are the emergence of new related professions, blurring borders between professions, difficulties defining narrow vocational standards. The study hypothesizes that foreign language teaching standards should be transformed towards greater interdisciplinarity and development of soft skills rather than a merely linguistic component in the course. The main methods of research, namely analyzing literature on the soft skills in demand with employers, polls of bachelors and masters on the need and possibility to develop soft skills in the ELT classroom, allowed identifying the soft skills which are in greater demand in terms of employability in the modern job market and received a positive feedback from the respondents – communicative competence, learnability, critical and creative thinking, collaboration skills. A similar poll was conducted among the graduates of the CAAS MSU working in various spheres. The study resulted in developing the new foreign language teaching standard which encompasses teaching two European languages, instructing with the help of interdisciplinary materials and forming soft skills on all the stages of foreign language acquisition.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.