English language for professional orientation: international methods of teaching

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State University of Trade and Economy

English language for professional orientation: international methods of teaching

Poidyn Marharyta, Teacher

Abstract

Introduction. In the 21st century it is extremely necessary to provide knowledge with effective teaching methods. The ESP (English for a specific purpose) course should provide not only the necessary knowledge but also skills that would make it easier for millions of students to communicate with international affiliates of any business sector.

Problem. At the moment, when teaching ESP course, consumers of educational services have conservative approaches to studying. Thus, after completing the course, graduates often have to go to private companies to gain knowledge or develop skills needed for fluency in a foreign language.

The aim of the article is to study modern international methods of teaching English in order to modernise the course of professional English.

Methods. The research was conducted using the methods of theoretical generalisation, comparative analysis and synthesis.

Results. There have been described and analysed the theoretical hypotheses of using international modern teaching methods in the course of professional English.

Conclusions. Today, teachers and students work to maintain results, but in teaching methods and in ways of studying the material, consumers and providers of educational obedience often choose conservative methods. In order to ensure the maximum productivity of the professional English course, it is proposed to implement modern international methods while presenting various segments of the material and practising different language equivalents.

Keywords: international teaching approaches, modem teaching approaches, TBL (task- based learning), PPP (presentation, practice, production), CLT (communicative, language, teaching), TTT (test, teach, test), PBL (project, based, learning), international methods of teaching.

Анотація

Англійська мова за професійним спрямуванням: міжнародні методики викладання

Пойдин Маргарита, викладач кафедри сучасних європейських мов Державного торговельно-економічного університету вул. Кіото, 19, м. Київ, 02156, Україна

Introduction

In the conditions of the 21st century, it is extremely necessary to provide knowledge with effective teaching methods, because students are consumers of educational services in the market of the educational segment. The ESP (English for a specific purpose) course should provide not only the necessary knowledge but also skills that would make it easier for millions of students to communicate with international affiliates of any business sector.

There are reviewed and analysed the methods of teaching English as a foreign language and emphasised those mentioned which are usually missing in the process of studying, however, are neither less effective nor harder to be implemented into the process of studying. Based on the analysis of existing materials there has been proposed the ways to be implemented into a course "English language for professional orientation".

Problem. At the moment, when teaching "English for a specific purpose" course, consumers of educational services have conservative approaches to studying. Thus, after completing the course, graduates often have to go to private companies to gain knowledge or develop skills needed for fluency in a foreign language. language english teaching educational

Analysis of recent research and publications. Teaching ESP (English for specific purposes) is aimed at developing students' skills during professional communication depending on the area of their professional field. It means that such teaching should be connected to students' particular specialisation. However, it is mostly based on a course book without a guide for a teacher and there are no explanations connected with approaches used in it.

As a result, a teacher starts doing all the tasks in the course book with students in direct order. It often happens that a teacher has to find and use additional sources concerning specialisation as the material given in a course book does not relate perfectly to the programme or, furthermore, contains information that is out of date [1].

Additionally, even if the teacher has a perfectly structured and modem course book for a particular specialisation it can occur that a professional does not know what approaches it is built on and how to use it productively [1; 2]. Furthermore, to cope with a course book and make a most productive lesson a teacher can use different approaches and methods such as PPP (presentation practise production) which must contain interactive elements; a connected speech which cannot exist without using special tools for cutting an audio, making a presentation with audio and video; and so on.

Not all tasks can be done in the direct order of a course book. Moreover, sometimes they are better to be replaced with others, even from other sources. Lewis Lansford, an author of "Unlock"(a textbook based on literacy), offers to use subtraction, selection, addition, replacement, rejection while working with a course book [1; 2].

The aim of this article is an analysis, theoretical justification and development of proposals for improving the course "English language for professional orientation" which in turn could simplify the process of gaining knowledge and necessary skills for further professional growth in any chosen field because of the possibility to cooperate with international organisations in any field.

Methods

The theoretical and methodological basis for writing the article were the works of domestic and foreign scholars on various modern methods of teaching a foreign language. The research was conducted using the methods of theoretical generalization, comparative analysis and synthesis.

Results

Analysis of existing international approaches in teaching English as a foreign language, it can be concluded that there exist many different international methods. They do not exclude each other and can be freely used simultaneously. The approaches can differ with the order of tasks, with the quality of tasks, as well as the segment of the language that is improved during involving it into a lesson.

Further, there follows the list of examined international methods that can theoretically be implemented into teaching of ESP:

PPP (Presentation, Practice, Production). This method is often used in a course book. It has several phases [3]:

The presentation phase is supervised by the teacher. The teacher may use any source of visual and audio material to demonstrate a situation. From this, he or she has the possibility to extract the required language equivalents.

During the (controlled) practice phase, learners have practicing, they say or write language structure correctly. General practice activities include drilling, multiple-choice exercises, gap-and-cue exercises, transformations etc. During this phase the teacher's goal is to direct the activities, to provide positive feedback to students, correct mistakes and model the correct forms.

The production phase comes when the learners completely mastered the form and learnt how to produce it with no mistakes in controlled exercises. In this phase, they use the new language structure to produce oral or written texts. Production activities include speeches, dialogues, presentations, etc. The teacher does not support a student correcting or translating anything in this phase, as the students should not make mistakes by now. If mistakes are made, they are pointed out after the exercise has ended.

However, language learning often involves more than mechanical practice. In addition, there is a lot of evidence appearing in the lessons to suggest that learners who do well in the practice phase fail to transfer this ability to the production phase, and - even if they do successfully manage the production phase - they often fail to transfer this ability outside the classroom [3].

TTT (Test, Teach, Test) is a language teaching approach where students have diagnostic tests at the very beginning of the lesson, without teacher assistance [4]. After having the results, the teacher plans and presents a lesson based on the students' specific needs or on their "gaps". Finally, learners need to do a task (test) at the end to put into practice what they're learned.

Teach phase, the last one, comes then. All the mistakes gathered by a teacher during the first phase are corrected and the target language is taught. The last phase is the second test where a teacher can see the results of the second phase [4].

Connected speech. Connected speech is based on a set of rules used to modify pronunciations so that words connect and flow more smoothly in natural speech. Native speakers of English tend to feel that connected speech is friendlier, more natural, more sympathetic, and more personal. Non-native speakers, however, are rarely able to predict which lexical item may or may not appear in a particular situation. They tend to depend almost solely on the sounds which they hear [5]. To use this method, the teacher must know how to drill the phrases or paragraphs, the methods of connecting words in fluent speech. It rarely exists in the list of tasks in a course book.

CLT (Communicative, Language, Teaching) is an approach that aims to achieve communicative rather than linguistic competence through learner interaction [6]. In a classroom that uses the CLT method, students do most of the talking. This enables students to practice communicating in English, continuously talking with each other, rather than listening to an instructor's lecture. Teachers can encourage students to interact with each other with minimal direct correction. The intent behind the communicative approach to speaking is to have students practice English without fear of awkwardness or making mistakes when learning a new language. Instead of interrupting or correcting students when they make mistakes, instructors who utilise the CLT approach might use indirect feedback or conversational redirections that do not interrupt a conversation [6].

Project based learning. Project-based learning is a popular teaching practice built around student-driven projects, done either independently or collaboratively, that are often shared with one or more groups of students [7]. This way, students are encouraged to learn by doing, which may lead to more interest, excitement, and energy in the classroom. A project is an extended task which usually integrates language skills through a number of activities. These activities combine in working towards an agreed goal and may include planning, the gathering of information through reading, listening, interviewing, etc., discussion of the information, problem solving, oral or written reporting, and display. Projects often focus on real-life contexts and are collaborative, requiring students to negotiate for meaning with their instructors, their peers, and even outside participants, depending on the assignment. In PBL, the teacher creates a student-centred learning environment and facilitates or guides students through the completion of their projects [7].

TBL. Task-based learning is a great alternative for language teachers. The lesson is based around the completion of a main task and the language equivalents for studying are determined by those which occur as the students complete the task [8]. The lesson follows certain stages:

Pre-task. The teacher involves students into the topic by playing a video/ audio with an example or presents it by his/her own. Then, there are given clear instructions on what they will have to do at this particular stage. It might be given support to the students to recall some terms or structures that may be useful for the task.

Task. The students work on a task in pairs or groups using the language resources that they have as the teacher monitors and encourages.

Planning. Students prepare a short report in oral or written form to tell the class what happened during their cooperation. Then, they rehearse what they are going to say in their groups. Meanwhile, the teacher is available for the students to ask for advice to clear up any language questions they may have.

Report. Students then report back to the opponents. The teacher chooses the order of when students will present their reports and there may be some quick feedback on the content.

Analysis. The teacher then highlights relevant parts from the reports of the different groups for all the students to analyse. They may ask students to notice interesting features within this text. The teacher can also highlight the language that the students used during the report phase for analysis.

Practice. The teacher selects language areas to practise based upon the needs of the students and what emerged from the task and report phases. The students then do practice activities to increase their confidence and make a note of useful language [8].

Furthermore, there can be mentioned the article of Aly AQoura Professor of Mansoura University in Egypt "New Trends in English Language Teaching". This article discusses the most recent trends in English language teaching and learning in 2020. It is divided into three broad sections where language approaches, syllabus are presented in the first part and the second part is concerned with methods and strategic teaching.

In the first section he states that there is less focus on the culture of native speakers of English unless there is a specific aim for following it. That is why the content and the form should put the students into the sphere of their specific purpose and gain the true experience of using language involving cognition, communication, collaboration and cooperation during the lesson. Aly states that many of course books are criticised due to the misunderstanding methodology by teachers as they try to force students often only to learn the material unless they should practice it.

In the second section professor claims that there are to be significant and complex student-teacher interactions inside and outside the classroom. The creation of a networking atmosphere and support of digital sources and platforms must be included into teachers' strategies when preparing for the lesson [9].

Proposals of implementation methods mentioned can be used for modernisation of a course "English language for a professional orientation" or ESP (English for a specific purpose). It must be mentioned thatalmost all the methods are usually combined in a course book in a mixed order. If a teacher is familiar with the theoretical material of the international methods and one knows the examples of such methods given, it is easy for such a professional to avoid mistakes while using any source of material when preparing for the lesson.

On the other hand, if a teacher does not cope with a course book in perspective of the international approaches but tries to follow the order of the list such a lesson can lose its productivity. This situation can be solved with the following proposals.

PPP. As it was mentioned, the method has three phases. Usually, the teacher uses the vocabulary given before the text and the text of a particular topic to present the target language needed. The students read and translate the text. There is an explanation of terms in the text. However, to understand those deeply a student needs to see or to hear different examples. Here can help elicitation. A teacher can tell a story of his/her own where the meaning of difficult terms are combined. Then, the students are proposed to put the terms into the story instead of the synonyms used. The other way is pictures or short videos connected with terms which make the understanding easier and faster.

The practice stage given in a course book is more or less normal taking into account that there are a lot of tasks with finding synonyms, antonyms, matching the definitions with the terms etc. However, here it would be better to use CLT as well to help students with pronouncing those terms fluently in connected speech.

The production stage is often out of date and does not correspond to the students' needs. That is why it is better to replace the old fashion task with the modern one. Also, there can be used additional methods such as PBL where students can be put in a real situation which may happen in their modern reality and CLT which will help young scholars to improve their speaking skills as much as possible.

TTT is often unseen in the list of the tasks as the stages of it are on different pages and mixed with other tasks. Also, sometimes this method is skipped or unused at all.

This method easily can be combined with the PPP method. Before presenting the new target language to students it is necessary to know whether they are unfamiliar with all units of target language or there are some of them which are already known. It saves a lot of time for a teacher and students.

After the teaching the unclear elements of the target language it may be added to the practise stage during which it can be seen whether the students use target language correctly or not.

The last two stages of both methods correlate. One task can slightly combine the production and the second test. The difference is only that the second test usually has multiple choices or filling the gaps forms but the production has only tips and a student must create a written or oral product showing one's confidence when using target units.

CLT. This method is almost the hardest to implement on the lessons of a course "English language for professional orientation" as it excludes using the first language (native language) of learners during the studying process.

It correlates with elicitation much because you do not explain or translate the target of language but elicit it with presentation of pictures, videos, stories.

One concept checking question (question concerning the meaning of target language) can save half an hour of explanation. Elicitation, also, helps much when giving the instructions to the students and checking their understanding. One instruction checking question can show you best whether students understood the task or not [10].

Connected speech. This method of teaching can help students to hear and talk better. And it must be used in each lesson no matter what structure it has. During the presentation phase of PPP the terms must be drilled in the context of real sentences. During production students must try to speak as they drilled before not stressing each word separately. When young scholars have their PBL lessons, the teacher ought to help them with the lexis needed for the project creation and later presentation for them to keep in mind that the language is a very flexible substance.

Another segment of implementing this method is listening.The difficult pieces of audios can be split on separate pieces and worked on drilling pronunciation and then relistened again to check the difference of the quality of hearing.

TBL. However, the TBL contains the project at the end as a copy of the teacher's task at the very beginning. Whereas PBL has the project at the end which did not exist in this form before. If the utter can take one or two lessons, the latter can take a whole week or more.

It is very significant to keep the audience motivated. Students must be involved in things which are modern and brainstorming. That is where TBL and PBL can help. During the lessons it is much easier to follow the TBL. A teacher turns on the video of a company presentation, for example, drills the language units needed for it. Students create their companies in small groups, plan the presentation, rehearse it and present several times to different mini groups which did the same task with their own companies. It allows a teacher to monitor the practice of all the students at the same time, gather their mistakes for the feedback part and make a most productive speaking lesson which is the strongly needed skill to be formed during the "English language for professional orientation" course.

Conclusions

Today, teachers and students work to maintain results, but in teaching methods and in ways of studying the material, consumers and providers of educational obedience often choose conservative methods. In order to ensure the maximum productivity of the professional English course, it is proposed to implement modern international methods while presenting various segments of the material and practising different language equivalents.

Conflict of interest. The author certifies that she has no financial or non-financial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript; the author has no association with state bodies, any organizations or commercial entities having a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or research presented in the manuscript. The author is working for the institution that publishes this journal, which may cause potential conflict or suspicion of bias and therefore the final decision to publish this article (including the reviewers and editors) is made by the members of the Editorial Board who are not the employees of this institution.

References

1. Jeremy, Harmer (1998). How to teach English. Longman publishing [in English].

2. Lewis, Lansford (2014). World of better learning: Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/2014/08/13/use-coursebooks-art-pedagogy [in English].

3. Achilleas, Kostoulas (2011). Lecture 6: Presentation Practice Production: AFL7020 Language Teacher Education. https://achilleaskostoulas.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/ppp.pdf [in English].

4. Pitmbar, Paudel (2018). Use of Test-Teach-Test Method in English as a Foreign Language Classes: Journal of NELTA Surkhet [in English].

5. Vanessa, Steele (2019). Connected speech: British Council, BBC. https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/connected-speech [in English].

6. Vanessa, Toro (2018). The Use of the Communicative Language Teaching Approach to Improve Students' Oral Skills: Canadian Center of Science and Education. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1200055.pdf [in English].

7. Joseph, S. Krajcik & Phyllis, C. (2006). Blumenfeld, Project based learning. The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences. http://daleydoseoflearning.weebly.com/ uploads/1/8/7/7/18774020/chapter_19_pbl_kraichik.pdf[m English].

8. Dave and Jane, Willis (2007). A Framework for Task-Based Learning: Longman [in English].

9. Aly Abdul Samea, Qoura (2021). New Trends in English Language Teaching and Learning New Trends in ELT&L. Mansoura University [in English].

10. Concept questions and time lines (2005). Graham Workman, Gradburn Publishing [in English].

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