Creation Of Multitexts In Foreign Language With Students Of Specialized Faculties

Abstract

The article contains the results of the activities on the creation and presentation of multitexts in the classes in a foreign language. The author analyzes the reasons for the low motivation of students in higher professional foreign language education to study the core subjects. One of the method which allows to increase the level of student training is the creation and presentation of the booktrailer. The creation and presentation of the booktrailer is the creation of multitexts in the lessons in a foreign language. The stages of the lesson on the theme are presented in the article. The lesson is based on the independent search for authentic information. The results of the lesson are presented in the form of creation and presentation by students of booktrusters based on authentic materials. The organization of the lesson is designed for students with the level of language training B2 in accordance with the requirements of the Council of Europe to the levels of foreign language proficiency.

Keywords: Professional foreign language educationmultitextsbooktrailer

Introduction

In these latter days the problem of the lack of modern students' desire to learn, remember and memorize the rules while studying foreign languages appears not only in the system of secondary education, but also in higher professional education. The question of motivation for learners becomes important and requires solutions at all levels of the educational system.

The lack of interest in the new knowledge can be explained not only by subjective traits of the students’ personality, but also by the existing objective factors, which include insufficient use of modern activity technologies in teaching practice, as well as peculiarities of students thinking.

Problem Statement

The specific feature of the psychological and physiological development of students is the phenomenon of the new formation, which in special studies is designated in terms of clipping thinking. Сlipping thinking, as a direction in the development of human relationships with information, provokes problems in the educational process, leading to the decrease in interest and motivation of learners.

Research Questions

The phenomenon of «clipping thinking» has generated a large layer of research in this field from the standpoint of psychology and pedagogy. The American philosopher, sociologist and futurist E. Toffler introduced a basic terminological unit, defining it as a «clipping culture». The author considers the clipping culture as a component of the general information culture, which forms unique kinds of information perception as zapping (Kalashnikova, 2014).

Zapping is a process in which a new image consisting of pieces of information and impressions is created through the non-stop switching of TV channels. This image does not require the imagination or reflection processes, here information is constantly updated (Cherepanova, 2016).

E. Toffler also appeals to the concept of «blip-culture» («blip» – a signal surge), implying a fragmentary-mosaic nature of the world views (Leovy, 2016).

L.V. Kalashnikova, conducted a research devoted to this problem. The author identifies several leading factors that give rise to the phenomenon of «clipping thinking» (Kalashnikova, 2014):

• Acceleration of the life pace and directly related to it the increase in the information flow, which gives rise to problems of selection and reduction of information, highlighting the main information and filtration of unnecessary information;

• The need for more relevant information and faster receipt of it;

• Increase in the diversity of the upcoming information;

• Increase in the range of cases in which a person engages simultaneously;

• Development of democracy and dialogue at different levels of the social system.

Purpose of the Study

The analysis of the situation in modern society in general and higher education in particular allows us to conclude that clipping thinking becomes an integral part of the students thinking. The task of the teacher is to find methods and approaches for its competent application in the educational process as well as in all aspects of life.

Creation of texts of the new formation in foreign language lessons can be realized through the presentation of booktrailers.

Booktrailer (in French «bandeannonce») is a short video, telling in an arbitrary art form about a book. The purpose of such commercials is the advertisement for latest books and the propaganda of reading, attraction of attention to books using visual means, common for trailers of movies. As a rule, the duration of the booktrailer is no more than 3 minutes. Such videos are made for modern books as well as for literary classics (Chernyak & Chernyak, 2015).

Research Methods

Booktrailer had become was the result of the work in the frame of the French language lesson «Au-delà de sa zone de confort» (Оut of the comfort zone). At the same time, the need to develop foreign communicative competence through the formation of speech, language, sociocultural, compensatory and educational-cognitive components was considered.

Priority educational and cognitive tasks of the session are todevelop abilities to work with various authentic sources of information and to form an algorithm for constructing oral statements with given parameters. The educational-practical (communicative) task was performed through the development of the ability for introductory reading and speaking in French.

The creation of a booktrailer in a foreign language should be preceded by preliminary work due to the specifics of the teaching subject.

At the organizational stage, a situation is presented that introduces an element of motivation and interest in learning a new topic.

The work on studying new material is organized based onplansheets which allows to present the structure and sequence of the lesson to the students. The plan sheet comprises the outline of the lesson (Table 01 ):

To get accustomed with the communication situation students are offered to read the authentic text-parable:

Dans un petit zoo il y avait un ours qui habitait dans une très petite cage quatre sur quatre. Il pouvait aller et venir dans sa cage, il faisait quatre pas, il se retournait et faisait encore quatre pas. Et ainsi il faisait tous les jours. Les visiteurs disaient : «Cet ours serait heureux s’il pouvait avoir plus de place pour bouger».

Un jour on fait pour l’ours la cage qui est plus grande. L’ours entre dans cette cage, regarde autour de lui, fait un pas prudent, un autre, un troisième, un quatrième ... Puis se retourne et fait encore quatre pas en arrière.

Il ne peut pas toujours comprendre que maintenant la petite cage qui limitaient sa liberté n'existe que dans son imagination. Mais cette cage dans la mémoire de l’ours est plus forte que la vraie. Donc l'ours marche dans une immense cage comme dans une petite cage: quatre pas en avant et quatre pas en arrière.

[In a small zoo there was a bear that lived in a very small cage four out of four. He could come and go in his cage, he was four steps, he turned around and was still not four. And so it was every day. The visitors said: «This bear would be happy if he could have more room to move».

One day we make for the bear the cage which is bigger. The bear enters this cage, looks around, takes a cautious step, another, a third, a fourth ... Then he turns around and takes another four steps back.

He still can not understand that now the small cage that limited his freedom exists only in his imagination. But this cage in the bear's memory is stronger than the real one.

So the bear walks in a huge cage like in a small cage: four steps forward and four steps back.

The next step is to fill the cluster, provoked by the teacher's question – what the comfort zone is for each student. The answers of the students are related to their habits, attachments and interests (home, study, work).

The work is aimed at developing the ability to set learning goals and objectives, to analyze the significance of the teaching material for yourself. Discussion on the reading of authentic material helps the students comprehend the topic of the lesson.

The main stage of the lesson isthe discussion of the «comfort zone» concept.Students describe their own usual activities, which they do every day.Based on the results of the discussion, the studentssuppose how to formulate this concept terminologically, and then compare their own definitions with the scientific definition of the concept: Au-delà de sa zone de confort (Оut of the comfort zone).

To help students develop the theme a teacher suggests them commenting in the quote «Votre vie commence làoùs’achèvevotre zone de confort» [«Life starts where the comfort zone ends»] (Neale Donald Walsch). As a situation-illustration, a video fragment with the speech of the psychologist Valérie Richard (Richard, 2016) is used, revealing the meaning of the psychological understanding of the exit from the comfort zone (Figure 1 ).

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After watching the video teacher asks to expand the cluster with situations that can be a zone of discomfort for students.

To demonstrate the situations that arise with people who have left the zone of their own comfort, teacher suggests studying the authentic texts with examples from personal experience of people. The work is organized in a group mode.

Example: Quand j’ai terminé mes études j’ai eu une offre d’emploi à Linz en Autriche. J’avais 24 ans et n’avais pas beaucoup d’obligations puisque je n’étais pas encore père de famille. Cependant un certains nombres d’obstacles se présentaient et me faisaient peur: je ne parlais pas l’allemand; je ne connaissais personne en Autriche.

[When I finished my studies I had a job offer in Linz, Austria. I was 24 years old and did not have many obligations since I was not yet a father. However, a certain number of obstacles arose and frightened me: I did not speak German; I did not know anyone in Austria].

The result of working with texts is the teacher's questions, which are discussed in groups and individually: Qu’est-ce que la zone de confort pour le personnage du texte?Quels résultats a-t-il atteints? etc.

[What is the comfort zone for the personage of the text? What results has it achieved? etc.].

Based on the results of the work at the previous stages, five advantages of getting out of the comfort zone are formulated (the teacher is guided by scientific research in the field of psychological discourse) (Table 02 ):

Learners solve the communicative task: they discuss in groups how to get out of the comfort zone, share their own solutions and opinions.

Clusters and information, obtained from authentic sources, allows to formulate a point of view competently in terms of language norms.

Findings

At the final stage of the lessons students make a booktrailer presentation based on the book of the French psychologist Daniel Blouin «Sorties de zone» [«Exit from the comfort zone»] (Blouin, 2014). Students briefly get acquainted with the content of the book. The task is to create a booktrailer using the lesson information and present it with comments. The work is performed in groups.

Students create booktrailers on computers, using various programs, which corresponds to the definition and presentation of the new nature text of the new nature (Figure 2 ).

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Reflection is a separate stage of the lesson, the teacher asks students to fill out the table and answer questions about the state of personal comfort or discomfort during the lesson:

Voudriez-vous sortir de votre zone de confort? Est-ce que vous avez été à l’aise pendant le cours? Appréciez votre confort de 0 à 10 points (par exemple: 0 – inconfortable; 10 – très confortable), etc.

[Would you like to leave your comfort zone? Were you comfortable during the class? Please assess your comfort state from 0 to 10 points (for example: 0 - uncomfortable; 10 - very comfortable), etc.].

Conclusion

The organization of the work on the booktrailer creation and presentation in a foreign language allows to solve a range of important tasks related to subject mastery.

Firstly, it helps to increase the motivation and interest of students in the subject, because it allows them to make full use of their skills to work with various information sources.

Secondly, it forms various components of the communicative competence in a foreign language.

Authentic materials are to develop proper speech, language, sociocultural, compensatory and educational-cognitive competencies.

Thirdly, this type of work allows you to organize an activity in the activity-oriented and person-oriented approaches on the basis of group and pair interaction of students.

Fourth, the meta-subject results of teaching a foreign language develop in terms of cognitive, regulative, personal and communicative universal educational activities.

Fifth, modern technologies of teaching foreign languages are applied, which contributes to the fulfilling the requirements of the federal state educational standards of higher education and meets the actual challenges.

Acknowledgments

The study was supported by the Surgut State Pedagogical University, project «The best lesson in a foreign language».

References

• Blouin, D. (2014). Sorties de Zone. Canada: Le dauphin blanc.
• Cherepanova, L S. (2016). 26). Cliphing thinking and prevention of its development in students.
• Chernyak, V D.Chernyak, M A. (2015). Booktrailer. Mass literature in terms and terms.
• Kalashnikova, L V. (2014). Clipping thinking as a format of information presentation incoginitiveactivity. Education, science and production,, 39, 67-71
• Leovy, J. (2016). 29). Alvin Toffler, author of
• Richard, V. (2016). 10). Sortir de sa zone de confort. [Video file].