The main goal of the discipline «Foreign language» is the mastery of students with the necessary and sufficient level of foreign language communicative competence to solve social and communicative problems in various fields of professional, scientific, cultural and everyday activities, when communicating with foreign partners and for further self-education.
The formation of skills of conscious independent work with language material and reflective skills of critical thinking are designated as tasks of teaching a foreign language, and reflection is mentioned as a means of optimizing independent work in English for professional purposes and increasing the level of educational autonomy.
Thus, program documents recognize the need for the formation of a modern student, both foreign language communicative competence, and reflective skills.
In this article, we will dwell in detail on the relationship of communication and reflection in the educational process in English for professional purposes, we will prove the possibility of their joint formation by means of a foreign language in English for professional purposes classes to increase the effectiveness of teaching.
One of the main principles of teaching a foreign language in accordance with the program is the principle of communicative orientation. In the educational process of English for professional purposes, on its basis, the need of students for real communication in a foreign language is realized due to the connection of the teaching with the real context of using a foreign language (professional and personal), which allows teaching students to use the language as a means of communication in the field of professional activities and in everyday life.
In addition, the communicative orientation of training is expressed in the development by means of English for professional purposes of communicative skills that are part of the key (general) competencies of a specialist with higher education. General communication skills are a necessary characteristic of a successful student, since their skillful and conscious (competent) use in educational and cognitive activities ensures effective and more durable mastering of the English language for professional purposes.
The teacher, as a more experienced participant in the educational process, encourages students to the creative process — a reflexive way of obtaining knowledge and developing skills. Acting as a manager of the process of mastering them and a subject of communication, the teacher gives students instructions for completing tasks, helps to formulate criteria for the success of their implementation in a group discussion of the problem, and builds a verbal and non-verbal feedback system for monitoring and evaluation.
By becoming participants in communication, with each other and with the teacher, students more successfully acquire language knowledge or develop foreign language skills when faced with new information. Speaking it in their own words, they combine new knowledge with what they already have.
Thus, foreign language communication helps to form reflective thinking in its manifestations such as analysis, interpretation, translation of information from one form to another.
Practice shows that learning together is not only easier and more interesting, but also much more effective. Moreover, this efficiency concerns not only the academic success of students, but also their intellectual and moral development. Particular attention is paid to group goals and a successful result, which can only be achieved as a result of the independent work of each member of the group (team) in constant interaction with other members of the same group when working on the topic / problem / question to be studied.
The interconnected formation of reflection and communicative skills of the individual by means of the English language contributes to the development of the ability, together with partners, to look at the situation from the outside and successfully find a solution to the educational problem in a reflective dialogue or polylogue. The ability to see oneself through the eyes of a group mate, or even put oneself in the place of another, helps the student to build relationships in the classroom correctly, in the future they will help to act constructively in professional and intercultural communication.
From the point of view of teaching methodology, the sequence of actions of an English teacher for professional purposes consists in the gradual transfer to the student of the function of managing the formation of a specific reflective skill and the cognitive process as a whole. For the teacher, this process begins with the interpretation of his own actions and the actions of the student, with the further creation of methodological support for students. Gradually, methodological support takes a hidden form, then the teacher refuses it altogether.
Involving students in the process of forming their own reflective skills, the teacher remains an adviser, an organizer of the learning process. At the same time, the student taking on the functions of teaching management, he gradually becomes a skillful and active subject of the educational process, responsible for the results of his teaching.
The sequence of training in the formation of reflexive skills consists of the following stages: mastering knowledge about how to learn how to perform an action; development of the ability to apply knowledge; implementation of independent activities.
The mode of conducting training in English for professional purposes in the form of a practical lesson provides favorable opportunities for the joint development of reflective and communicative skills. In contrast to the lecture, where the monologue speech of the teacher prevails, in the English language classes for professional purposes, the development of acquired skills in practice and the application of skills in the mode of multilateral communication.
Reflexive communication skills have a positive effect on the formation of foreign language communicative competence due to the fact that they create conditions for the exchange of opinions, solving educational problems in the process of communication in a foreign language, contribute to increasing the responsibility of one student for the results of the group's actions during the assignment and the gradual transfer of responsibility for the results of learning from teacher to student.
The complexity of organizing educational material to achieve the goals of improving the effectiveness of the educational process in English for professional purposes and English for professional purposes consists, in addition to the already given methodological justification, in finding an adequate ratio of tasks aimed at developing professionally oriented communicative competence and at forming reflective skills.
In this regard, when organizing the educational material of the entire course as a whole and each lesson, we were guided by the following fundamental provisions:
- When planning each lesson, plan the formation of a specific reflective skill as a goal.
- Create a favorable environment for reflective communication, where the structure of the lesson helps the student to get into a reflective position, and positive emotionality encourages the development of the student and the acquisition of confidence in mastering skills and abilities. Thus, an educational space is being created as an environment for communication, cooperation, self-development of the personality of students and teachers due to timely and diverse feedback, positive motivation.
- Select learning tools and task types that have the potential to develop both reflection and communication.
At the same time, as we believe, there are two productive ways of selecting tasks that allow you to simultaneously form communicative and reflective competencies — the introduction of a reflexive component into tasks of a communicative nature and the performance of traditional lexical and grammatical exercises in pairs and groups.
At the beginning of the lesson, students are included in the goal-setting process, the teacher asks students to set the goals of the lesson after getting acquainted with the topic, while he encourages students to comment on the goals, and, if necessary, corrects them based on newly received information from students. Thus, the reflective skill of goal-setting is trained in the course of group communication.
References:
- Almabekova O. A. Reflection and communication in taching English for professional purposes// Modern problems of science and education. — 2013. — No. 5.;
- URL: https://science-education.ru/ru/article/view?id=10374 (date of access: 05/19/2023).
