Didactic Potential Of Discussion Technique In Teaching Foreign Language For Pedagogics Students

Abstract

The relevance of studying this problem is due to the demand for professionals with foreign language fluency in both national and foreign labour markets. Second-language skills for professional interaction are essential for building up competitive specialist’s professiogram. Thus, the role of Foreign Language as a course at the teacher training departments of universities has been increasing constantly. Language proficiency enables students of Pedagogics to understand and work effectively with the authentic sources of professional information, to express their own thoughts and ideas, demonstrate terminology proficiency in interpersonal and professional communication. In this context, this article aims to identify the didactic potential of discussion technique in teaching English to students of Pedagogics. The leading research method was the survey, conducted among 17 English language teachers of the university, and it highlighted a certain relationship between the frequency of discussion technique used and improving cognitive abilities of the student body, increasing their motivation, stimulating their speed of thought and open-mindedness. The paper sets out the strategies for organizing and conducting effective discussions such as active listening (listening comprehension), analytical thinking, priority of public speaking skills, constant collaboration and mutual criticism, and the complexity of the problems and topics discussed during the course. The authors identified the conditions under which discussion techniques are most effective and also established the aspects of discussion technique in teaching English to students of Pedagogics such as content-related, procedural and monitoring.

Keywords: Discussion techniquelanguage proficiencycommunicative competencecross-cultural communicationstudents of Pedagogics

Introduction

Problem Statement

• compliance with the specifics of teaching a foreign language in the process of communication and the principles of a communicative approach to teaching foreign language in university;

• priority of the participants’ exchange of opinions, which implies their personal interest in the subject matter of the conversation and in achieving the communicative goal, thus prompting a motivated statement;

• relevance to the students’ age, to their emotional-sensory development;

• the implementation of interdisciplinary links while studying at the university and applied importance for students of non-linguistic universities;

• a positive post-effect in the form of search or cognitive activity due to the emotional push received during the discussion.

Research Questions

The process of language learning must reflect an underlying emphasis on providing students with needed knowledge and strategies in the course of an active exploration of new ideas and experiences, that’s why instructors must assign students interesting and meaningful tasks to facilitate their understanding and application of learning materials. Discussion helps students to form a learning community by being engaged in activities such as getting to know each other, setting up individual and group learning objectives, comparing and contrasting, analyzing the information presented in the cases, sharing online resources and synthesizing the principles of instructional design. The didactic potential of the discussion forms of work, the strategic approaches to their organization and implementation in the pedagogical university, the conditions for ensuring the effectiveness of the discussion in the lessons of a foreign language: these are the problems that we are trying to consider in our study.

Purpose of the Study

This article aims to identify the didactic potential of discussion technique in teaching English to students of Pedagogics. In this regard, the priority was to set out the strategies for organizing and conducting effective discussions, as well as to identify the conditions under which the discussion techniques are most effective.

Research Methods

Findings

The results of the summative stage of the experiment are shown in Table 01 .

It provides the data on two types of oral activity: speaking and listening (the dominant types of oral activity in the discussion forms of work).

We kept to the fact that the debate is a method of teaching which is characterized by multidimensionality: it may be universal in nature that manifests itself in the possibility of its use both in teaching of special disciplines and in practice of foreign language learning; it may be of long-range nature which is reflected in the development stages of students learning continuity, thus fitting into the context of developing problem-based learning and promoting internal language potential of each group member and the formation of process thinking; then it may have constructive nature that declares itself in independent providing (under the supervision of a competent teacher) the evidence by the student, justifying the principles and approaches, using his/her personal experience.

: active listening (listening comprehension), analytical thinking, priority of public speaking skills, constant collaboration and mutual criticism, and the complexity of the problems and topics discussed during the course.

Also, we managed to identify the conditions under which discussion techniques are most effective: friendly and open interaction, the participants’ willingness to listen to and hear other positions and points of view, adequate information on the problem, opportunities to speak, detailed, correct reasoning of one’s position, opportunities to ask questions. Here, it is necessary to emphasize the role of the teacher in organizing this kind of work.

• content: 1) it is professionally oriented, based on interdisciplinary links; the latter we subdivide into a) actual - these are the connections between different subjects on the basis of scientific data, examples, arguments; b) conceptual - intersubject communications at the level of professional terms common to related subjects, concepts and ideas based on inter-subject links. 2) auxiliary-accompanying - verbal clichés which are typical of discussions and debates, proverbs, sayings, aphorisms, the scope of the training material, evaluation of the student’s presentation. 3) accompanying 4) preemptive.

• procedural - 1) stage-by-stage training - the first stage - question-answer work; the second stage - drilling monologue utterances; the third stage - drilling dialogical statements; 2) rehearsal training – transition from mini-discussions to professionally-oriented discussions - to help students to formulate their own opinions using terminology, to clearly express their own point of view, to hear the opinion of opponents. 3) the transition to professionally-oriented discussions based on informative peculiarity - designate the purpose of the discussion; develop a plan for its implementation; correctly and logically think through questions; monitor the process; formulate and authorize the completion of the discussion. The culmination of such kind of a discussion should be coming to a mutual agreement. Discussion is accompanied by teacher’s corrective questions to comprehend, clarify, analyze, generalize and evaluate.

• supervising - the regular evaluation of the discussion is based on its results, the evaluation is given both by two “experts”, chosen constantly from among the students, which helps them to see and assess themselves “as others see” and by the teacher. The final evaluation is a consideration of the “pluses” and “minuses” of the discussion held by all participants of the process.

02

Conclusion

The analysis of literary sources on the use of interactive methods in the process of teaching a foreign language, as well as the observation and analysis of classes using interactive methods of teaching a foreign language enabled us to conclude that the method of discussion, having a considerable didactic potential in stimulating students’ oral activity, is one of the important means to intensify the educational process in the university. The shaping of students’ speech activity, in turn, aims to prepare them for the profession, to improve speaking skills of students of pedagogical universities.

Acknowledgments

The work is performed according to the Russian Government Program of Competitive Growth of Kazan Federal University.

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