Currently, training of professional engineers able to be competitive with foreign counterparts in the international labor market is one of the most important problems of Russian technical universities. To achieve this goal, graduates of engineering universities are required to speak a foreign language at the appropriate level to follow the latest advances in science and technology and become professional and competent experts in their field. Teaching a foreign language in the current context is an important task in the complex of humanitarian training in a technical university, as future specialists, speaking a foreign language, keep themselves open to their professional activities. UNESCO experts and governments of different countries come to the conclusion that good results can be achieved if universities use e-learning foreign language management systems. It is a brand-new technology of education for life in the information society, orienting a student to a new work style, developing skills and abilities for continuing education. The e-learning(EL) technology completely changes a person's attitude to education, provides an opportunity to learn anywhere, anytime, and throughout life, even without leaving home and not crossing borders. In recent decades the problem of building successful EL-strategies for learning a foreign language has become extremely relevant and widely discussed throughout the world. Innovative foreign language courses are being developed and implemented using EL technologies in many technical universities. Nosov Magnitogorsk State Technical University (the RF) is not an exception. E-learning has long been actively implemented in the educational process of the university. On the basis of the Moodle virtual educational environment, an educational portal was created. The portal contains a catalog of courses on the main subjects taught in the university. The goal of this article is to consider the implementation of e-learning technologies in the following fields: Foreign Language, Foreign Language in Professional Activities, Business Foreign Language, Professionally-Oriented Translation, the use of synchronous and asynchronous communication tools for optimal organization of educational activities.
The paper focuses on didactic capacities and perspectives of "WebQuest" technology elaboration in teaching foreign language communication. The establishment of a new educational system, aimed at interacting at international level requires a high level of knowledge and preparation for any life conditions. It means that the learning of several foreign languages rather than one has become one of the educational background conditions, a factor, which has a significant impact on successful advancement in various spheres of activities in a new post-industrial society. Contemporary conditions to higher education have highlighted the need for blended learning application, which combines a methodical variability. In this regard, the "WebQuest" technology in foreign language teaching has proved to be an effective and motivational tool. Based on the project-based learning, it integrates communicative, problem-based learning and research methods, and possesses a number of advantages. Firstly, the "WebQuest" technology improves building creative and motivational capacity of students and enhances the objectivity of assessment. Secondly, learners enlarge their experience in presentation making, business negotiations and the use professional terminology. Thirdly, learners acquire new knowledge, extend multidisciplinary links due to the related subject areas, use authentic materials in foreign languages, which significantly enhances possibilities of professionally oriented foreign language communication. Thus, the use of the educational "WebQuest" technology in teaching foreign languages at HEIs showcased that its effectiveness in the educational process is of polarized nature. This kind of activity fosters positive motivation, which in its turn results in enhancing foreign language competence of students, desire to raise their personal and professional self-esteem and take competitive advantage in society.
The paper deals with the possibilities of applying information and communication technologies which have become widespread in all spheres of human activities including education. Various approaches with the use of e-learning resources in the process of foreign language teaching are described in detail, as well as the key concepts of e-learning, its main challenges and techniques. The paper focuses on advantages and drawbacks of the e-learning system in comparison with the traditional system of education. In view of advanced educational standards, the importance of actions aimed at enhancing the level of foreign language proficiency is emphasized. The authors examine the mechanisms of e-learning resources integration in the process of education. The central focus of the paper is the Moodle platform, which has gained wide popularity in the e-learning environment. Moodle is an open, free of charge learning environment with a user-friendly management system. It allows to cover a large number of learners, which is the most relevant for universities. The present platform organizes the process of foreign language teaching, and using various methods of control, effectively manages this process. Moreover, it fosters skills of students' independent work. However, in spite of all advantages of this platform, it has some drawbacks, such as significant financial implications in the implementation of the resource, inconsistency with the users' query, difficulty of planning, uneven development of informational technologies and insufficient monitoring by university teachers. The efficiency of the isolated use of electronic educational resources has been questioned in the paper. The authors come to the conclusion that such method of education is not always productive in the pedagogical aspect, as it does not provide direct interaction between teachers and learners, which is especially important when learning a foreign language. The authors suggest undertaking specific actions to address the problem. One of them is to combine informational technologies and traditional methods of education. The authors are convinced that a blended learning flexibility model enhances the degree of learners' autonomy, helps to use contact hours more rationally. The paper also addresses the perspectives of using an educational e-resource Moodle in the modern educational process.
The article deals with elaboration of electronic terminological dictionary-minimum in the context of cognitive and methodological challenges. It is known that the reliance on cognitive processes, such as representation, storing, processing, interpretation and reproduction of new knowledge, creates conditions for effective foreign language professional communication teaching. The article substantiates a cognitive approach as a conceptual basis for elaborating a new model of dictionary-minimum of terminology units. This approach enabled the authors to set the unit of the dictionary selection - the term-concept (TC) as "operative unit of memory". When mastering TC, learners' mind has a complicated chain of cognitive processes of emergence and forming of scientific notions, which are professionally-coloured ones. Definitely, TC as a specific mental unit, is verbalized in the language system by the lexical unit of terminology character, which represents a fragment of professional reality and determines a special concept of engineering field of knowledge. Following cognitive imperatives, the authors revealed lingvodidactic and cognitive principles of ?? selection. Taking them into account, methodological and cognitive grounds for organizing dictionary-minimum of terminologically-marked lexis have been substantiated. The conceptual field as a unit of terminological dictionary-minimum has the property to integrate all grounds for creating an optimal, systemically-modelled dictionary-minimum. In accordance with cognitive ideas about the mental essence of the concept, the selected contour of the dictionary-minimum field is some kind of professionally-organized environment, which helps to model in the cognitive mind of students the whole integrity of concepts, or integrated fragment of professional concept-sphere, which reflects systematic knowledge of specific highly-professional educational disciplines. The cognitive vision of the process of a new format dictionary-minimum elaboration enabled the authors to shift accents from linguistic phenomena to mental processes. Organization of the dictionary-minimum predetermined the necessity of using praxeological approaches, in the course of which the authors elaborated a cognitively-set algorithm of students' work with the electronic version of the dictionary-minimum. Thus, electronic dictionary-minimum in the context of cognitive and methodological challenges becomes a guide to the terminological world of students' specialty with specific professional shell, and serves a kind of catalyst of adequate understanding of foreign language terminology.
Within the context of the Bologna process referring to an intergovernmental higher education reform the period of the future specialists' training is shortening, consequently, more time is spent on developing the students' hard skills that is special skills connected with the peculiarities of the definite profession. However, the research based on the surveys analysis shows that soft skills are one of the most significant parts of the career advancement. It is usually difficult to define the level of one's soft skills as they cover different skills helping to organize the professional activity in the best way. Among them there is motivation, leadership, comprehensive knowledge and knowledge of a foreign language as well. It allows concluding that language training is one of the priority orientations. The article is an attempt to show that e-learning resources can be helpful in solving the problem of correlation between class hours and self-guided work hours. The findings of the research are proved by the survey among the engineering students (bachelors) of Irkutsk State Research Technical University and Nosov Magnitogorsk State Technical University who had the opportunity to access advantages and disadvantages of learning English with the help of e-learning resources. Two groups of students were surveyed: those who initially studied English using the traditional approach and those who switched from the e-learning approach to the traditional one. The analysis showed that both groups regard the knowledge of English as a necessary component of the career advancement, as well as they note the domination of advances in using e-learning resources while mastering the English language.
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