Modern trends in methods of foreign language training at the institutions of higher education in Ukraine

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Modern trends in methods of foreign language training at the institutions of higher education in Ukraine

Nataliia Serdiuk

PhD in Pedagogy, Associate Professor, Associate Professor of the Department of Foreign Philology,

TranslationandMethodsofTeaching, SHEI «Pereiaslav-KhmelnytskyiStatePedagogicalHryhoriiSkovorodaUniversity»

Стаття присвячена сучасним тенденціям в методиці викладання іноземних мов у вищих навчальних закладах України. Підкреслена необхідність переважання сучасних методів у навчанні іноземних мов у порівнянні з традиційними.

Найбільш важливим визначено комунікативний підхід до навчання іноземних мов. Виявлено сучасні тенденції в методиці викладання іноземних мов у вищих навчальних закладах України: комунікативність (використання комунікативного підходу під час методу діалогів, проектів, ігор, наприклад рольові (role-play) чи кругові (acirclegame), а також парної, групової роботи тощо); студенто-центричність (спрямованість навчального процесу на особистість студента для того, щоб це було не тільки корисним, але й цікавим для всіх, хто вивчає мову); інтерактивність (використання інтерактивних методів: мозкового штурму, інтерв'ю, «круглий стіл», «аналіз ситуації», дискусії, дебати, метод одного слова (onewordmethod), метод загального фізичного відгуку (TotalPhysicalResponse), протилежних аргументів, тестові турніри, вікторини з YouTubeвідео тощо); акцент на творчість, мотивацію та самонавчання студентів (перегляд відео-роликів і фільмів, ведення особистого, групового чи факультетського блогів та написання віршів і пісень іноземними мовами, різні імітаційні ігри, проектна робота тощо); використання сучасних технічних засобів (комп 'ютер, ноутбук, планшет, смартфон, Ipad, стереозвуковий портативний Bluetoothмовець тощо) та різноманітних програм. Всі виявлені тренди вважаємо перспективними та ефективними в українській освітній системі сьогодення. teaching a foreign language communicative

Особливу увагу приділено гаджетам як найбільш прогресивним засобам сьогодення для навчання іноземних мов в Україні. Визначено ефективні види роботи з їх використанням у іншомовній підготовці. На підставі перспектив впровадження технічних засобів для навчання іноземних мов, виявлено коло проблем вищих закладів освіти України, які можна вирішити, використовуючи особисті учнівські та викладацькі гаджети у навчальному процесі.

Зроблено висновок, що методичне забезпечення викладання іноземних мов має бути розроблене на основі поєднання перспективних методів, підходів та відповідних інструментів для того, щоб заклади вищої освіти України могли успішно досягти своїх цілей стосовно підготовки майбутнього іншомовно компетентного фахівця.

Ключові слова: іноземна мова, навчання іноземним мовам, метод, сучасна тенденція, комунікативний підхід, вищий навчальний заклад, інтерактивний метод, технічні засоби, гаджет.

Статья посвящена современным тенденциям в методике преподавания иностранных языков в украинских вузах. Была подчеркнута необходимость преобладания современных методов обучения иностранным языкам над традиционными. Коммуникативный подход к обучению иностранным языкам был идентифицирован как наиболее важный.

Определены современные тенденции в методике преподавания иностранных языков в украинских вузах: коммуникативность; студенто- центричность; интерактивность; акцент на мотивацию, творчество и самообучение студентов; использование современных технических средств. Особое внимание было уделено гаджетам как наиболее прогрессивным средствам обучения иностранным языкам в Украине в настоящее время.

Ключевые слова: иностранный язык, преподавание иностранных языков, метод, современная тенденция, коммуникативный подход, высшее учебное заведение, интерактивный метод, технические средства, гаджет.

The article was dedicated to modern trends in methods of teaching foreign languages at Ukrainian higher educational institutions. The necessity of prevailing up-to-date methods in teaching foreign languages was underlined. The communicative approach to teaching foreign languages was identified as the most important one. Modern trends in methods of teaching foreign languages at Ukrainian higher educational institutions were defined as: communicativeness; student-centeredness; interactivity; emphasis onto students ' motivation, their creativity and self-study work; the modern technical means ' usage. Special attention was paid to the gadgets as the most progressive means for teaching foreign languages in Ukraine nowadays.

Key words: foreign language, teaching foreign languages, method, modern trend, communicative approach, higher educational institution, interactive method, technical means, gadget.

The growing interest of Ukrainian scholars towards the methods of language training all over the world has been recently raised because of the needs and demands of the higher education reforms in the measures of the Ukraine's European integration. According to the fact that «Ukraine participates actively in EU capacity-building and academic mobility programmes, leading to international and intercultural experiences of students and staff, familiarisation with new learning and teaching methods, and strengthening of competences and networks» (1), there is a need to renovate the process of foreign language training at Ukrainian higher educational institutions, studying out the popular approaches, methods and tools used nowadays, the conditions of implementing the progressive ones into practice, identifying the tendencies in foreign languages training. The problem of identifying the present-day trends in methods of foreign language training at the institutions of higher education in Ukraine is considered as the core one because of the pragmatic needs of our state.

Recent research and publications analysis has shown that the problem of methods of foreign language training at higher education institutions was studied by many contemporary foreign (V. Boumova, R. Blair, N. Dusbayeva, G. Madieva, S. Martinelli, H. Stern, M. Tailor, R. W. Tyler, D. Zemenova etc.) and native (L. Konoplianyk, O. Siutkina, M. Skurativska, L. Naumenko, L. Strelnikova etc.) researchers. But with the course of time some methods are turned to be more popular, effective or progressive, they also can be realized using different approaches, techniques and tools, which should be studied out.

The aim of the article is to summarize the popular methods of foreign language training in Ukraine and to identify the latest trends in this sphere.

The scholars around the world are always in searching the most effective ways and tools for teaching foreign languages successfully to students. On the ground of the EU's demand to train highly qualified and skilled, competitive specialists and the need of educational reforms, the problem of our article is up-to-date.

Nowadays Ukraine is doing its best to renovate the system of education. On 5 September 2017, the Parliament passed a new educational law (the Law of Ukraine «On Education») called to advance the much-needed education reform. The higher education system in Ukraine is also undergoing major reforms and the new Law of Ukraine «On Higher Education» would be probably signed soon. So, in the accordance with the European requirements for educational quality, there are such changes in this sphere: informatization of the educational space, integration processes in modern domestic education, the development of the Ukrainian and European higher educational institutions cooperation in the field of educational and scientific activity, student international exchanges, the possibility of obtaining a second higher education and training for master's programs abroad.

One of the reasons for reformation of higher pedagogical education is that teachers mostly use time-tested standard methods in their teaching practice and not adding the latest and prospective ones to this process. We should underline the necessity of the up-to-date methods prevailing in teaching foreign languages saving the best educational traditions. On our opinion, the most important and popular approach in teaching students foreign languages is the communicative one.

1. Communicativeness is defined by us as the first modern trend in methods of teaching foreign languages at institutions of Ukrainian higher education. The purpose of teaching foreign languages at a modern higher school is helping students to achieve communicative competences, which will enable them to orient and meaningfully interact in a foreign environment, to realize their knowledge and skills for solving concrete communicative tasks in real life situations, including work ones. The using of the intercultural and communicative approaches in training foreign languages make students to be competitive, to feel confident while communication with representatives of other nations etc. J. Richards also highlights the communicative competence which is, as he defines it, «being able to use the language for meaningfull communication» (Richards J., 2006, p. 7).

Such activities as making dialogues, group and pair or whole-class work, project work, different games, role-play became essential in modern foreign languages teaching at institutions of higher education in Ukraine.

The communicative approach encourages teachers to use mostly the method of dialogues (training fluent quick reaction, acting skills and grammatical correctness), but nowadays it is considered to be traditional, and the method of games, that's very much in fashion, because they can check the student's knowledge and skills quickly, add an element of fun and freedom. A circle game becomes more popular in the modern foreign language training. They are considered to be very useful game that involves the whole group of students, sitting in a circle, helps to train the students' communicative skills and bringing them together in a positive and collaborative working atmosphere. Such circle games could be held with students of different specialties, study years, levels, for a variety of educational purposes, for every discipline of the foreign languages training system at higher educational establishments.

Minding the fact that practically it is impossible to use one method or approach solely when aiming to teach a language successfully, we tried to defined the other popular and effective approach in the foreign language training, which is called a personality-oriented one.

2. Student-centeredness is the second trend in methods of teaching foreign languages at Ukrainian higher educational institutions. The aim of this approach is to put the learner's person in the center of the study process, raising the process of teaching on such a scale that it would be not only beneficial but also interesting for all the learners. The main tasks of personality-oriented teaching are: to disclosure of individual cognitive abilities of every student; to develop students' individual cognitive skills; to help them with their selfknowledge, self-actualization, self-realization, self-determination; to form a life culture, which makes it possible to build their own lives productively.

An interactive technology occupies an important place in personality- oriented teaching in the Ukrainian universities and institutes.

3. Interactivity is considered by us to be the third trend in methods of teaching foreign languages at institutions of higher education in Ukraine.

The realization of personality-oriented approach in teaching foreign languages at Ukrainian higher educational institutions can be seen in the practical usage of such popular interactive methods as «brainstorming», «interview», «round table», «situation analysis», discussions, debates, etc. The systematic introduction of innovative interactive methods (less popular because of novelty such as Total Physical Response (TPR), One word, Opposite Arguments, Test Tournaments, YouTube Videos Quizzes, Electronic Role Playing, Puzzle pieces) will enable foreign languages teachers to solve many problems successfully.

4. Emphasis onto creativity, motivation and self-study work is defined as the fourth trend in methods of teaching foreign languages at higher education of Ukraine. Teaching foreign languages should be done not only through the traditional methods, but also through introducing watching videos and movies, writing personal, group or faculty blogs, writing songs and poems, different imitation games, project work and others. The great part of these methods gives a good source for future Ukrainian specialists' creativity development during their training at universities and institutions.

1. One the most popular methods mentioned above is believed to be a project work. The experience has shown that it is very interesting and really effective to combine, for example, reading a magazine or newspaper article about a particular person (like famous teachers Ron Clark, Brad Cohen, Erin Gruwell or others), following their personal site or blog, watching the movie about him or her («The Ron Clark Story», «Front of the Class», «Freedom Writers»), with doing a project work and writing the results in students' blog or personal pages in social networks. Such unity of different methods combined in the measures of one theme, like «Career» during the course of «Practice of oral and written speech» is really motivating and effective. Nowadays, teachers take into consideration students' demands for watching real movie stories, searching interesting information in net together with traditional way of receiving information (books, newspapers).

Some of Ukrainian practical teachers began to propose students a Web- quest that is a pedagogical problem task with role-play elements that should be performed with the use of the Internet resources. Web-quests demand teacher's high level of subject, methodical and communicative competence; have rather complex process and system of organization, because they are considered to be the combination of the project method and game technologies in the environment of the WWW by means of Web-technologies. In foreign language training they can help to develop students' analytical skills and creative thinking.

2. The orientation of students onto self-study work is also very important, because nowadays youth are mostly plunged in the virtual communication for a needed information or news and they should be oriented by teachers in the correct directions towards the opportunities in teaching foreign languages in Internet. In this way, students may use different programs, sites for selfeducation, for example to improve pronunciation, communicative skills, to check grammar knowledge or vocabulary by themselves, to find the unknown information about known phenomenon or the like.

3. At the present day using mentioned and the other modern approaches and methods alone may not help to the process of teaching foreign languages be resulting, because they need to be equipped with the modern technical means.

5. The modern technical means' usage is defined as the fifth trend in methods of teaching foreign languages at higher education of Ukraine. The use of technical means (computers, laptops, tablets, smartphones, Ipads, portable speakers and others) in the methods of professional training has great didactic capabilities, implements the principles of accessibility, integration, interactivity, targeting, redundancy, sensitivity, versatility, updating educational communications; also it provides the opportunities to create an active, managed communicative learning environment.

We have tried to summarize the advantages of using modern gadgets in teaching foreign languages: creating a comfortable learning environment, activating student's learning activities, intensifying training and raising the level of motivation, forming self-assessment of students and creating conditions for their self-work, facilitating the perception and memorization of material, saving time etc. But also, with the advantages of using technical means at teaching foreign languages, Ukrainian institutions of higher education are facing a lot of problems from the material (expensiveness of purchase, installation, repair and improvement) to the others like replacing of a real-live communication to a virtual, etc. (except programs such as Skype, Viber, WhatsApp); prevailing of monolingual foreign language (through videos, forums, blogging and pages in social networks, correspondence via e-mail, SMS messages, Messenger etc.) than dialogical. We would like to note that there are plenty of free programs that are useful for teaching foreign languages: e-dictionaries, encyclopedias, tests, computer translation programs, the program Enlightened Platinum 2000, Triple Play Please!, Bookshelf etc. (Serdiuk N., Marchenko N., 2017, p. 537). The use of technical means allows expanding the learners' knowledge of foreign languages, activating all kinds of their speech activities: listening, speaking, reading, writing.

Personal experience shows that during the teaching foreign languages using the most popular gadgeti nowadays - a smartphone and a laptop - enable the effective types of work with students as: 1) using an electronic dictionary or similar programs (like standard Lingvist, Duolingo, etc.) for oral or written answers, for translating texts from the first (or the second) foreign language into native and vice versa, for searching for new words and enrich their vocabulary; 2) listening audios (radio, songs, poems, etc.) and videos on Internet (TV, movies, vlogs, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, etc.); 3) photographing information (tasks, texts, models, schemes, tables, etc.) to work with a grammatical or lexical material; 4) using dictaphone function - to check the just learned text or information, to improve pronunciation, to analyze the use of lexical units, the correctness of used grammar structures, to control the timbre, rhythm and intonation, to write interesting ideas, or facts not to forget, to save the important material in oral; 5) playing games and doing tests on phone - to widen the foreign vocabulary and improve knowledge of grammar and communicative models (English Grammar Test); 6) participating in web based classes, that offer trainings foreign language learning, speaking, reading and writing, - to communicate with native speakers of the particular foreign language, a teacher, using a personal email account which is free, mailing a home work to it and getting results, revisions, feedback, suggestions in turn; 7) having students' own blogs (a personal or professional journal frequently updated for public consumption), which enable communicating with their teachers and friends who are far away, with the native language speakers to improve their speaking skills; 8) uploading the useful files and documents (Word, Pdf, etc.), programs, audios and videos and others.

Teachers of many Ukrainian universities also use their personal smartphones, Ipads and others to create, save, upload, receive and send the documents, audios and videos, for example 3D Stereo Sound Portable Bluetooth Speakers are often used by them to perform some parts of lectures or for learners to listen audio materials at practical lessons, activating sound by smartphones. The students' and teachers' personal gadgets use during study can help learners to improve their foreign language knowledge and communicative skills very fast, to develop their creativity and self-study work. They are considered to be one of the most promising and progressive means for teaching foreign languages in Ukraine.

On the basis of the prospects of implementing technical means' for teaching foreign languages, we tried to determine the range of problems of a higher education institution, which can be solved by using personal gadgets in the educational process, among which are: 1) the unrestricted accessibility of students to educational material, literature, etc., convenient anytime and anywhere; 2) the multi-functionality of gadgets that can replace certain distributive, visual or audio-video material, or other teacher information that is necessary for the effective teaching of foreign languages; 3) the economy of the financial resources of the institution (electricity, funds for the purchase of computers, multimedia whiteboards, etc., printing materials, maintenance of phonetic classes), and so on.

The modern technical means' usage in teaching foreign languages at higher education of Ukraine helps students to improve their linguistic knowledge, to train such skills as reading, writing, speaking, listening comprehension, combining theory and practice, to develop the ability of creative and resulting self-study working much more effectively and fast; supplies teachers with an opportunity to make the communicative learning environment more effective, active and interesting for both teacher and student; promotes universities' economy of the financial resources for technical equipment of the educational process.

The research of using modern methods of foreign language training at the institutions of higher education in Ukraine gives it possible to identify five the most essential trends, those are the following: 1) communicativeness; 2) student-centeredness; 3) interactivity; 4) emphasis onto students' creativity, motivation and self-study work; 5) the modern technical means' usage (especially personal gadgets). All the trends above are thought to be promising and effective in future Ukrainian training system. We made a conclusion that methodological support of teaching foreign languages should be designed with ground of the combination of prospective methods, approaches and the relevant tools, in this way the institutions of higher education in Ukraine could get their goals in the training of future foreign language competitive specialists.

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