Professionally oriented reading as one of the basic components of teaching ESP at non-linguistic higher educational establishments

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Professionally oriented reading as one of the basic components of teaching esp at non-linguistic higher educational establishments

Nikolaienko O.V.

Our country can't avoid the integration processes which are taking place in global economic system and in the sphere of education as well. Our universities are training the future specialists, who are able to compete in the world job market. Learning a foreign language contributes greatly to such professional activities as introduction to new technologies, scientific theories and trends, outstanding innovations, making contacts with foreign companies, enterprises, educational establishments, developing the level of professional competence of specialists. The age of new technologies, that are rapidly developing all over the world, encourages the educationalists to create new methods of teaching foreign languages for specific purposes.

The relevance of the research is conditioned by the exceptional importance of reading in the process of mastering a foreign language as a means of developing foreign language skills and also as a source of information. The flow of information is increasing day by day, and the graduates of higher educational establishments will inevitably have to face the necessity of using a foreign language in their professional activity. Professionally oriented reading in a foreign language is an important part of a specialist's activity. It provides new professional information. Such reading and comprehension skills are of utmost importance in a future specialist's practical work after graduating from higher educational establishment, when there's the necessity of reading the piles of professional literature from all over the world. Developing reading and comprehension skills is impossible without close connection with other types of work with language material, first of all vocabulary and grammar practice [2, c. 74]. The increase of the interest to mastering foreign languages has been observed recently. Professional information is becoming more available due to mass media and Internet development. Despite the necessity and motivation of mastering a foreign language, the majority of the graduates cannot use it in their professional activity [6, c. 3]. That's why developing professionally oriented reading skills should be paid more attention to.

The objective of the study is to consider the methods of teaching professionally oriented reading, types of exercises and tasks aimed at developing students' professionally oriented reading skills, to analyze main methods of work with the professionally oriented texts.

Many scientific researches have been carried out on this problem lately. The problem of the training material selection and determining the context of teaching the students reading professionally oriented texts were revealed in the works of such scientists as H. I. Borodina, Y. P. Bovchaliuk, Y A. Hapon, T. I. Truhanova, H. V. Barabanova, Z. I. Klychnikova, T. S. Sierova, S. K. Folomkina, T. O. Vdovina, N. I. Hez, K. Y. Kusko and others. The research of T. S. Sierova and H. V. Barabanova highlights the concept of teaching professionally oriented reading. There are also many scientific publications and theses investigating the cognitive and communicative methods of teaching reading in a foreign language (H. V. Barabanova, T. D. Shevchenko). Some methods of independent reading of foreign texts have been developed by M. A. Aliieva, N. M. Mahazova, and others.

Learning foreign languages at non-linguistic higher educational establishments is professionally oriented. It means that foreign languages are taught in order to teach the students to use them in their professional activity, that is to read the foreign literature for specific purposes in order to find the necessary information, and also to be able to communicate with foreign colleagues on professional issues [6, c. 12]. It was investigated that while learning a foreign language for specific purposes students learn the language not fully, but sufficiently for their professional activity. New curriculum of foreign languages at non-linguistic higher educational establishments presupposes developing the skills of searching the information for professionally oriented reading and analysis of foreign publications [8, c. 54]. Professionally oriented texts is the source for enriching the professional vocabulary, the subject of reading and discussing at classes, the base to be used in communication situations, for listening, that is for purposeful and effective students' speech activity.

The main tasks for the students while studying professional literature in a foreign language are: 1) getting information supplementing and expanding the training material studied by the students in the process of studying major subjects of the curriculum; 2) developing the skills necessary for independent reading of professional literature [1, c. 76].

Students should leam to work with texts independently. Lecturers control students' independent work, making the students get knowledge and skills necessary for reading. Lecturer's task is to prevent grammar and vocabulary problems which may occur while reading professionally oriented texts. Students who are able to read professional literature and single out the necessary information from different sources are likely to become good professionals able to compete on world job market. Lecturers should teach the students of non-linguistic universities to translate scientific and technical texts with dictionaries and without them, develop flexible professionally oriented reading skills to meet professional challenges of a future specialist. Experience of work at non-linguistic higher educational establishments shows, that students have some difficulties while working with bilingual dictionaries, as very often they can't select the necessary meaning of the word according to the text. Very often students read the text only once or even don't read it at all and start writing out and translating the unknown words and don't even try to select the corresponding meaning. That's why they will have to look up the words in the dictionary several times looking for the correct translation and wasting too much time. So, the lecturer should help students to learn how to work with the dictionary, how to use it and how to select the proper meaning of the word. Mastering new language forms used in the text should be paid much attention to, helping to memorize them by using different types of exercises.

Having defined the topics of professional texts and active vocabulary to practice, it's necessary to create a complex of exercises to solve communicative and cognitive tasks while working with professional literature. This complex may be divided into two groups: 1) grammar and vocabulary exercises, that presuppose completing the same type of tasks many times, and form the mechanism of reading and comprehension; these exercises are aimed at developing reading skills; 2) exercises, the object of which is context of scientific text, getting the factual information and its understanding, and therefore they assume simultaneous solution of different mental tasks. These exercises are aimed at developing reading competence.

Students at non-linguistic higher educational establishments may have some problems while reading professionally oriented texts because of the lack of understanding of language phenomena inherent to the foreign language. The lecturer's task is to eliminate all language difficulties (phonetic, grammar and vocabulary ones). Selecting language materials to be studied at classes the lecturer should take into account the level of students' knowledge, skills and abilities, that is how much the students are ready to the work and extract the necessary information from the texts. It's necessary not only to motivate students to reading texts but also to develop professional competence of the future specialist. Students will gladly engage in the process of study in general and in professionally oriented reading in particular only if this process corresponds and satisfies their professional needs. So, if the text is relevant, meaningful and informative, includes highly specialized terminology, grammar and vocabulary structures corresponding students' knowledge and abilities, then the students will be more willing to study professionally oriented reading. In order to estimate the level of students' abilities and knowledge, it's necessary to test the students orally or in written form before starting to select the training material.

At the initial stage of studying professionally oriented reading the level of novelty may be not too high, as the first year students do not study majors at this stage. It will be too difficult for the students to translate the text about engine structure if they don't know this structure in their native language. The lecturer's goal is to form the students' language basis, so that they will be able to process the accepted information independently in future. At this stage, lecturers adapt texts for their students according to their level of knowledge. To help students learn new grammar and vocabulary forms presented in professionally oriented text, it's necessary to select and compose the exercises for the classes properly. Following the classic rule of teaching from the simple to complex, at the next stage lecturers may increase the volume of novelty by proceeding from simple descriptions and characteristics to more complicated ones aiming gradually at an authentic text. Training text should replicate the basic characteristics of an authentic one (text structure, structural types of paragraphs, distribution of information stress. It will help to solve the problem of transition of the future specialists from reading adapted literature to studying an original one. Students get an opportunity to obtain additional information on the topic or subject studied. It will encourage the students of non-linguistic higher educational establishments to continue reading such texts. When the student is able to get the necessary information from the text, he should use it in different forms, volumes and situations, e.g. in oral speech in the form of retelling, dialogue, discussion or in written form as an essay, report, etc. educational professionally text language

At some later stages of study, it's possible to use written texts to develop the skills of summarizing the information obtained from the text. In addition to the ability to extract the information, the ability to use it in different forms, volumes and situations of oral communication, is developed.

There are several types of reading. The type of reading depends on the aim of professionally oriented reading. The reading types can be classified into: reading for specific information or scanning, skimming, research or detailed reading. The aim of scanning is getting the necessary information from the text by just fast looking through it. It may be finding the name, number or a piece of specific information. This type of reading presupposes a rather high level of reading skills, abilities to navigate the semantic structure of the text. Skimming presupposes the ability to view the information contained in the text. It requires from the students to know a lot of language material, that's why it's better to use skimming at classes with senior students, though it's necessary to develop student's skimming skills from the very beginning of ESP course. While skimming students should get an overall impression of the content. They identify if there is necessary information available in the text, if there's any necessity to read it more attentively in order to make a detailed study of the information and use it in their further studies. Detailed reading presupposes full understanding of the text. Students translate the text, work on mastering language forms, contained in it. Students should learn to overcome all the difficulties in understanding the foreign text on their own. For this type of reading lecturers should select the texts having the cognitive value, informative significance, and also the most complicated once in regard to content and language material.

To make the process of studying professionally oriented reading more effective, it's necessary to do pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading tasks. They should be aimed at necessary students' skills and abilities formation, and should correspond the types of reading. Each stage of teaching professionally oriented reading at non-linguistic higher educational establishments is very important and should not be omitted. Pre-reading tasks should eliminate all the language difficulties which students are likely to face while reading. The purpose of pre-reading tasks is extraction of content and factual information. Content and factual information of the text is a component category of text informativity. It is studied along with other types of information in the text (content and conceptual, and content and subtextual). Content and factual information of the text is the information about the facts, events, phenomena, succession of events, their participants, time and scene. The goal of the lecturer at pre-reading stage is to motivate students to read and to create student's interest to the information contained in the text. To reach the goals of prereading stage, there are many exercises helping students to work freely with the text at this stage of study reading for specific purposes. These are 1) exercises on anticipating the information contained in the text; 2) exercises on identifying structural and semantic components, and grammar and vocabulary structures; 3) exercises on guessing the meaning of terms and unknown words in general; 4) exercises developing the skills of working with dictionaries.

At while-reading stage of work with professionally oriented text the lecturer identifies the level of students' skills and abilities. The students of non-linguistic higher educational establishments are aimed primarily at communicative purpose, focused not only on developing reading skills, but also on mastering and consolidating grammar and vocabulary forms. At the while-reading stage the lecturer controls the process of mastering professional terms, and grammar and vocabulary structures used in the text. The purpose of this stage is identifying conceptual information. Devising and elaborating training exercises lecturer should give himself the answers to these questions: what is the author's idea; what is the text structure - is it a narration, an explanation with different examples, are there any arguments and counterarguments; what kind of knowledge will students get after reading it. It's better to begin with the exercises helping to understand the overall idea of the text, and only then to consider smaller speech units, such as paragraphs, sentences and words.

For the while-reading stage such exercises can be developed: 1) identifying the main idea of the text; 2) singling out the information that can be used by the future specialist in his career; 3) exercises on singling out semantic reliance in professionally oriented text.

Post-reading exercises are intended to check comprehension, to control the level of reading skills and ability to use the acquired information in future professional activity. Exercises used at post-reading stage should be aimed at 1) control of comprehension of all the information in professionally oriented text; 2) ability to find the necessary information in the text, in accord with tasks and goals formulated at pre-reading stage; 3) recognizing grammar and vocabulary structures; 4) ability to interpret and retell the text; 5) developing the ability to express own opinion on the information read, it can be done in the form of a report or an essay on the given topic.

After reading the text and working on it, the lecturer should carry out a final control of students' knowledge in order to analyze the efficiency of his own work and students' activity. Traditional forms of control, such as a survey, essay, discussion or even a credit, will suit. Selecting the texts for professionally oriented reading the lecturer should take into account students' abilities, the level of their grammar and vocabulary skills. The aim of the lecturer is to teach his students to work independently with professionally oriented texts, to enable them to get urgent professional information from different foreign sources.

Conclusion. In the result of the research conducted, basic types of work with professionally oriented text and forms of control of student's knowledge, aimed at developing professionally oriented reading skills, were identified. Different types of exercises and tasks to work with professionally oriented texts, intended to develop students' professionally oriented reading skills, were considered. Different types and methods of work with professionally oriented text suggested in the article are not the only possible ones. The research gives an opportunity to start developing the complex of exercises according to specific professional sphere. It may become a reason for further study of this problem.

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Abstract

The article reveals the necessity of educational process modernization by means of teaching ESP at non-linguistic higher educational establishments. The age of new technologies encourages the educationalists to create new methods of teaching foreign languages for specific purposes. The reasonability of paying much attention to professionally oriented reading is proved. Different types of reading are considered. Students 'problems while reading professionally oriented texts because of the lack of understanding of language phenomena inherent to the foreign language are studied. The ways of eliminating all language difficulties (phonetic, grammar and vocabulary ones) are suggested. In the result of the research conducted, basic types of work with professionally oriented text and forms of control of student's knowledge, aimed at developing professionally oriented reading skills, were identified. A complex of exercises developing professionally oriented reading skills are offered.

Key words: professionally oriented reading, reading skills, English for specific purposes.

У статті розкривається необхідність модернізації навчального процесу засобами навчання англійської мови для спеціальних цілей у нелінгвістичних ЗВО. Вік нових технологій змушує науковців та освітян винаходити та розробляти нові методи викладання іноземної мови у спеціальних цілях. Доводиться доцільність приділення максимальної уваги професійно орієнтованому читанню. Розглядаються певні труднощі, що виникають у студентів під час роботи з професійно орієнтованим текстом через брак розуміння мовних явищ, притаманних іноземній мові. Пропонуються шляхи вирішення мовних труднощів (фонетичних, граматичних та лексичних). Розглядаються різні види читання. В результаті проведеного дослідження було визначено основні види роботи з професійно орієнтованим текстом, що спрямовані на розвиток навичок професійно орієнтованого читання, а також форми та методи контролю знань студентів. Запропоновано комплекс вправ із розвитку навичок професійно орієнтованого читання.

Ключові слова: професійно орієнтоване читання, навички читання, англійська для спеціальних цілей.

В статье раскрывается необходимость модернизации учебного процесса посредством обучения английскому языку для специальных целей в нелингвистических высших учебных заведениях. Эпоха новых технологий требует от педагогов и ученых разработки новых методов преподавания иностранных языков для специальных целей. Доказывается целесообразность обращения максимального внимания на профессионально ориентированное чтение. Рассматриваются трудности, возникающие у студентов во время работы с профессионально ориентированным текстом, вызванные непониманием языковых явлений, свойственных иностранному языку. Предлагаются способы их решения. Рассматриваются разные виды чтения. В результате проведенного исследования определены различные виды работы с профессионально ориентированным текстом, нацеленные на развитие навыков профессионально ориентированного чтения, а также формы и методы контроля знаний студентов. Предлагается комплекс упражнений для развития навыков профессионально ориентированного чтения.

Ключевые слова: профессионально ориентированное чтение, навыки чтения, английский язык для специальных целей.

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