Training of specialists for professional foreign language communication

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TRAINING OF SPECIALISTS FOR PROFESSIONAL FOREIGN LANGUAGE COMMUNICATION

LOMAKINA Larysa Volodymyrivna,

Senior Lecturer of the Department of English for Engineering №1,

National Technical University of Ukraine

«Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute»

Introduction

The education system and, in particular, the system of training specialists in higher educational establishments must meet the requirements and innovative trends of the current state of the society development. New sociocultural realities: globalization, internationalization, personal orientation and humanization, cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism - require significant attention of educational researchers to the development of modern educational strategies for the formation of specialist's key competencies, put forward new requirements for his personal qualities and training. Among the important ones are deep professional knowledge and skills, the ability to apply them flexibly, initiative, communication skills, creative activity, readiness for continuous self-development. The competitiveness of modern specialists is determined not only by their high qualification in the professional sphere, but also by their readiness to solve professional problems in foreign language communication. The presence of linguistic knowledge allows the specialists to be aware of everything new that is published in their professional field, equips them with the achievements of world science, promotes their use in their practice.

A real tool for obtaining high-quality modern knowledge and a competitive advantage in professional activity is foreign language communicative competence, which is an effective means in the system of scientific knowledge, a necessity in a multicultural space, for which cross- cultural communications in all spheres of activity are becoming more and more characteristic. And, therefore, special attention needs to be paid to the creation of an effective foreign language learning environment, its provision with a methodology for the optimal use of modern information and communication technologies (ICT) oriented towards the realization of pedagogical goals, improvement of didactic principles, methods and forms of education.

Under such conditions, the scientific search for approaches that ensure the effectiveness of specialists' professional language training has become relevant. In this regard, the priority area in the renewal of foreign language education is recognized as professionally oriented learning of a foreign language, which involves the formation of the specialist's ability to communicate professionally in a foreign language.

The above-mentioned allowed us to make a conclusion about the need to resolve the contradictions: - between the social order of society for a specialist with practical skills in using a foreign language in their professional activities, and the existing practice of teaching this subject in higher professional educational establishments; between the awareness of specialists in various fields of science and industry of the need to improve language training and insufficient motivation to learn a foreign language by students of technical universities; between the need for scientific and methodological support of the educational process in teaching a foreign language to students of technical universities and the degree of its equipment [1, p. 28].

Research publications analysis. The improvement of educational processes, the basic principles of general scientific and methodological aspects of forming the competencies of future specialists in the information society are the subject of scientific works by V. Bykov, O. Romanovsky, S. Sysoeva. The peculiarities of the implementation of the competence-based approach in foreign language education are revealed in the works of S. Amelina, S. Nikolaeva, M. Tadeeva and others. The analysis of scientific achievements of representatives of domestic and foreign educational space also showed special interest in the integration of educational and communicative strategies in the process of learning foreign languages at different levels of education, as evidenced by the works of C. Nikolaeva, O. Storonskaya, R. Oxford, J. O'Malley, K. Raupach, J. Rubin, K. Seresova, H. Stern and many others. Their works outline both classification problems and methodological and didactic aspects of the formation of appropriate strategies.

The analysis of existing approaches to teaching a professional foreign language in the system of higher education and the study of the problem of language training of a future specialist were carried out by M.M. Babinets, L.I. Berbenets, T.A. Bryk, N.V. Kish, S.V. Kazak, O.V. Wise, Yu.A. Nikolaenko, G.A. Neustroeva, N.A. Sura, O.V. Tinkalyuk and others, indicate that the humanitarian training of a university graduates in general and language training, in particular, do not fully meet the needs of society and the individual, do not allow a specialist to solve professional problems with the necessary quality and meet personal needs in a foreign language environment.

The purpose of the article. The aim of the study is to analyze the existing approaches in teaching a professional foreign language in the higher education system, to carry out a theoretical justification and a practical study of the features of the criteria for selecting authentic educational material and the stages of working with it when training a specialist in professional foreign language communication, which contributes to the implementation of the principles of continuity, communicativeness and authenticity.

Research methods. To achieve the objectives of the study, methods of critical analysis of scientific and methodological sources, system analysis, descriptive and prognostic methods were used.

Presenting the main research material

In modern conditions of Ukraine's integration into the European educational space the problem of foreign language training of future specialists in higher educational establishments is of particular importance. Professional foreign language communication is a part of foreign language education and at the present stage plays an important role in formation of multilevel education of Ukraine. Of particular importance is the fact that the purpose of learning a foreign language is objectively linked to the content of foreign language professional education and professional communication. foreign language authentic educational

The problem of professionally oriented foreign language training of future specialists for a long time and rightfully attracts the attention of methodologists and teachers. When we speak about constantly growing public need of training in a foreign language of audience of specialists in short terms, we automatically understand that it is not only about the need to teach them to communicate in a foreign language, but, first of all, to communicate in specialized language, on their professional interests. Constantly growing scientific and business contacts between specialists of different countries do such communication necessary and as practice has shown, possible in short-terms, but in case of properly organized training.

Despite the importance, sufficient attention has not been given to this question in the literature. At that time, as the issues of teaching students to read foreign language literature for specific purposes has become the theme of a number of researches, the work with specialty trained audience is still little investigated.

Professional foreign language communication training of students of higher technical universities essentially differs from such training for professionals. Training students in reading literature, possession of oral speech on the material of their future specialty, the teacher realizes that reports them new facts and, therefore, meets difficulties of a double sort: linguistic and extra linguistic. Taking into account this circumstance, teachers and methodologists, constituting education manuals, select for them such texts that contain material, clear from the point of view of specialty, which doesn't require thorough professional knowledge. Practice shows that most often this material is of descriptive character, understandable for non-specialist, whom usually the teacher or the methodologist is. Easy content involves linguistic difficulties, such as the diversity of grammatical structures in the offered material, the presence of synonyms and other features which are not typical for scientific prose style. The analysis of texts' fragments from different textbooks for students has shown the existence of difficulties of both linguistic and extra linguistic character. The very structure of language in teaching students does not fall into their field of vision. The structure serves as a means for understanding the content of the read text fragment. This fact is decisive when choosing both the material and the forms of working with it. Training students, it is necessary to care about the logic of this or that science, or rather, about the logic of creation a study course in a particular science. Hence the concept of an arrangement of a training material «on the increasing difficulties» that determines its arrangement in the textbook of a foreign language from more general on content to more specific, from descriptive material to concrete one, which contains schemes, drawings, formulas [6, p. 34]. At the same time, as it has already noted above, the level of difficulties of such material is defined by its clearness for the teacher. Also, it is interesting to note about the fact of the existence of redundant information in the simple texts and its absence in the complex texts that complicates understanding of additional texts.

A fundamentally different approach to the solution of a problem can be seen in a work experience with specialists of high professional qualification in teaching their professional foreign language communication. It should be noted that in the case of different professions, we often have to talk about the various features of scientific prose. The language of books on mathematics seriously differs from the language of books and articles on engineering graphics; physics differs from electrical engineering, system analysis - from the economy, etc. And, nevertheless, there is one important feature that fundamentally unites all fields of training professionals and determines the forms and methods of working with professional foreign language. This feature is professionals' deep and comprehensive knowledge of their subject. For reading comprehension it is enough for them to understand one-two words of the sentence to accurately guess the content of the sentence, and several consecutive sentences give them the opportunity to fully understand the contents of a large text passage [8, p. 45]. Unlike a student or a person who is not an expert in the field, but who understands the content of the sentence through its form, the professional distinguishes and perceives a form as a transmission medium of a cleared thought. Hence is the paradox: a large number of professionals may examine literature in their field, not knowing a foreign language or knowing it very poorly. It should be noted that this observation is valid in relation to the Exact Sciences, and almost not for the Social Sciences. Unlike mathematics texts, where the authors do not express their attitude to the reported facts and where the interpretation of the facts is unambiguous, in texts of the Humanities and Social Sciences the existence of several points of view and the author's attitude to the offered idea require the full understanding of contents through the analysis of a text form.

The importance of the selection of education materials in professional foreign language training.

Let's consider some experience of training in professional foreign language communication of the specialists having high special and vocational training. It is about the teachers of various technical disciplines.

The selection of education materials for classroom work and independent work at home is very important. According to Larsen-Freeman [4, p. 129] one of the characteristics of communicative language teaching is using authentic materials. The authenticity of the material, primarily its scientific authenticity, without any attempts of profanation or intentionally simplified teaching is the main requirement for the selection of the training material. Attempts to «popularize» the material, coming from the idea of its «clearness» for the teacher, can cause the negative reaction of the specialists, their critical attitude toward offered material and negatively effects on the success of training. Conversely, the approval of the choice of a training material is a key determinant for the high motivation of the specialists in learning the material. According to Kilickaya [2, p. 6] using authentic materials increase and develop learners' motivation because such materials offer students a feeling that they are learning the real language. In addition, Nuttall [7, p. 172] also states that authentic texts can be motivating, because they are a proof that the language is used for real-life purposes by real people. So, the specialists are truly motivated to learn a foreign language only if teaching material constantly addresses their needs.

The second situation that influences on the selection of education material for working with specialists - is the optionless of compliance with such a sequence of presentation of teaching material which is connected with logic of creation a course in a particular discipline. It is interesting that such sequence of presentation often induces professionals on the additional spontaneous or independently prepared reports about the place of the material in the course, its relative value, the impact or the reasons of the described phenomena or facts.

It should be stressed that in the selection of professional education material, it is necessary to comply with its subordination to the same linguistic topic: grammatical, lexical or phonetic, and within one or more specific themes: a certain structure or model, a specific grammatical form, word formation and others. The offered fragment of educational text can be not large in size (ranging from 100 - 150 words). For the first five-six lessons it is recommended to take the fragments of a specific text, containing one idea. They usually do not exceed 200 - 250 words. How to work with such a passage on the initial stage is more or less compatible. Professional is offered to read the passage silently and do some reading comprehension tasks. Then the teacher reads this passage aloud, and the professional monitors in the book. The perception of a text fragment by ear, supported by its graphic form with necessary pauses, logical accents, allows the specialist to be convinced once again that he has correctly understood the text, only having looked through it.

Further work is performed in a format «question - answer». Questions have specific character. They are intended to provide and control the full understanding of the text's content. Then the teacher can offer to complete sentences or restore any part of the sentence. The effective exercise, aimed at the development of oral communication skills is paraphrasing sentences with the maintenance of its contents. Maintaining of meaningful relations between the elements of the sentence in any combinations and exercises - is an indispensable working condition.

Better stage to begin professional foreign language training. At the initial and the subsequent stages of learning professional foreign language communication we suggest not to refuse from the use of native language in the classroom, because the system of concepts is formed in the native language and it would probably be extra optimistic to hope for its rapid formation in a foreign language. Translation is often used as a means of preventing and correcting of logical, semantic or grammatical mistakes. A rapid translation of the phrase into native language allows specialists, seeing a mistake, immediately correct it or search the ways of its correction.

It is possible to begin professional foreign language training considering the following circumstances. The experience of such training convincingly proves that mastering of terms is not difficult for the specialist, because many terms are international. The main difficulties are presented in grammatical constructions. From here we can conclude that specially selected, well-prepared training material located on the basis of one leading construction can be studied as soon as this construction has been fully studied. According to Kim [3, p. 189] authentic materials can be used with advanced and intermediate level learners only. However, an early transition to classes of professional learning doesn't give the expected effect because there is no saturation of such material in this training period. So, a small size of investigated training material and insufficient readiness of specialists in a foreign language doesn't allow them to work with material so that to master it perfectly.

Therefore, it would be better to start professional learning at the stage when a sufficient dictionary and all normative grammar are mastered, when they have a certain degree of automated skills for reading comprehension. In case of such position, it is possible to give training material in large parts, to work effectively and to achieve good results.

However, only practice and experiment on the effectiveness of the introduction of education material on different training stages with maintenance of all fundamental features of such material can give the final answer to this question.

Conclusions and further research prospects

Researches have shown that: specialty training through the language and language training through the specialty is one of the most important problems of vocational training of specialists; training of professional foreign language communication of students of higher technical establishment is fundamentally different from such training for professionals; when training, of particular importance is the selection of authentic training material and its working stages. It is learning a foreign language that should be considered as a means of transferring to the professionals of socially and professionally significant information, developing of skills to use foreign sources in their professional activities, training them to life-long learning [5, p. 21].

To increase the level of specialists' professional foreign language competence - means to give them such knowledge, practical skills and know-how that will allow to use a foreign language as a means of information activities, systematic replenishment of their professional knowledge and the ability of professional communication.

In connection with foregoing, it is actual to search the ways of improving the efficiency of a foreign language teaching of professionally trained staff.

Список джерел

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2. Kilickaya F. (2004). Authentic materials and cultural content in EFL classrooms. [Електронний ресурс]. URL: http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Kilickaya- AutenticMaterial.html.

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4. Larsen-Freeman, D. Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 129 p.

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References

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