Teaching English Monologic Oral Production to Law Students: Differentiated Approach

Abstract

Background: Among numerous issues of differentiated teaching, the problem of building competence in oral monologic production in Law students – considering the level of independence and knowledge of students – has not been studied in depth yet. This causes difficulties for providing qualitative foreign language (FL) education to Law majors who have not attained the appropriate level in FL communicative competence in conditions of homogenous training groups. Purpose. The article aims to prove the effectiveness of the system of exercises and tasks designed to enhance English monologic production skills in Law students based on differentiated approach with regard to individual and psychological characteristics of learners, their cognitive needs, communicative abilities, motivation, independence, professional mindset and professional activity. Results. The system of exercises and tasks for building the competence under discussion requires specification of phases in the teaching process. Therefore, the author presents a three-phase process for teaching English oral monologic production to law students. The phases involve pre-text, text-reproductive and productive stages of developing monologic skills. Discussion. The process of teaching is organized in four stages: diagnostic, planning, teaching and final. The diagnostic stage is designed to measure the level of students’ knowledge and independence with a view of differentiating the groups of learners. The planning stage aims at developing educational content and materials as well as correlating them with the level of students’ knowledge and independence. The teaching stage involves instruction based on implementation of the system of exercises and tasks which were designed to purposefully address oral monologic production skills in the classroom. The final stage focuses on observing the dynamics in students’ monologic performance and independence as well as on rearranging training groups based on students’ performance level.

Main Approaches of Business English Teaching to Future Lawyers: A Case Study of Ukrainian Higher Institutions

“…We agree with Yaroshenko (2019), that the main task of differentiation is not to bring all students to the unique standard at the end of the course, but to get them achieve the best possible results according to their abilities, individual peculiarities, interests and needs. Thus, Druzhchenko (2018) in her research shows the efficacy of the system of assignments designed to enhance in law students the English-language monological skills. It is shown that the application of the differentiated approach draws heavily on the personality developing of the law specialists.…”