Distance Learning Of The Russian At The Technical University In The Pandemic

Distance learning of Russian language and speech culture

In the pandemic, teaching Russian language and speech culture (a mandatory discipline for Russian students of a Technical University) was moved to a distance format. The materials of the educational and methodological complex (EMC) of the discipline “Russian language and speech culture”, specially prepared for distance work and placed in the electronic educational environment, were used for students of the 1st-V courses at Bauman Moscow State Technical University. The essence of our concept of building EMC is that this complex is built on a block-modular principle, and each module ends with midterm control or homework.

The blocks of the EMC are its structural components, and the modules are its substantively completed sections, as a result of the study of which students acquire skills and abilities: stylistically competent expression of ideas; effective work with guides and dictionaries; the use of linguistic means and speech etiquette formulas in accordance with the situations and purposes of communication; registration of business documents of a personal and official nature; analytical processing of text information, construction and editing of educational and scientific texts.

The “Russian language and speech culture” EMC, which is addressed to 1st-V year students of all faculties of the Bauman Moscow State Technical University and is intended for conducting lectures and practical classes, includes the following content modules: 1) Fundamentals of speech culture (characteristics of norms and styles of the Russian literary language); 2) the culture of business speech; 3) the culture of scientific speech. The blocks of the EMC “Russian language and speech culture” are the following components: 1) A course of lectures; 2) Workshop: correction and prevention of typical speech errors; 3) Reference materials (norms of the Russian literary language): 4) A workbook for independent work of students with homework and control materials (tests on the main topics of the course). All listed components were available to students in printed and electronic versions for distance learning.

A necessary link in the organization of the distance format for passing the discipline is to conduct video lectures for students of educational groups on the Zoom platform and placing blocks of EMC on the BMSTU platform “Electronic University”. The electronic manual on the Russian language and speech culture was actively used for conducting lectures. Thematically, it is related to other components of the EMC (Reference materials on standards, a Workshop, a Workbook, and Control tasks).

Electronic lecture course on the Russian language and speech culture includes theoretical information on the following topics: 1. Language as a means of communication; 2. Speech culture and its components; 3. Styles of the Russian literary language; 4. Official business style as a subsystem of the language; 5. Methodology and technology of scientific work. Written scientific communication.

In general, this electronic manual is a hypertext document, the main feature of which is that you can view the document not only sequentially, page by page, but also in any order (determined by the user's needs), moving through hyperlinks. Hypertext links allow students to quickly navigate to other pages of the Course or to a specific place on the same page, which is very convenient when working independently with the manual.

Informative hyperlinks in the Electronic lecture course serve as reference points that help students better understand the content of the course, learn the key concepts of the main topics and their problems. They allow the student to: 1) move from the subject index-a list of the main concepts of each topic, placed in alphabetical order at the end of the manual to the necessary place in the Course sections; 2) check themselves on the control questions presented at the end of each topic (a hyperlink allows you to quickly find the answer in the corresponding paragraph of the topic). The practice of distance learning of the Russian language and speech culture at Bauman Moscow State Technical University has shown that the hypertext apparatus of the electronic manual is an effective tool for organizing student's independent work.

Thus, the electronic format of the manual is convenient for distant work of students on the material of each topic of the course, since it organically presents content, training and control components. An important role in organizing control of students' knowledge by discipline modules and conducting current, midterm and final control was played by e-mail, which was used by students to check completed tests, (test papers) and homework.

Distance learning of Russian as a foreign language for postgraduate students

The discipline “Russian as a Foreign Language” includes 4 main lexical topics on which the Russian language course is based: 1) Education; 2) Science; 3) History and culture; 4) Contemporary problems. The course was created on the Moodle platform, which hosts video and audio materials, illustrations, diagrams, textbooks and study guides, automated tests, homework and tests. The teacher independently forms the course, taking into account the individual characteristics of the group and each student, introduces basic and additional materials that the postgraduate student can access at any time. In addition, the Moodle platform allows you to attach video recordings of webinars held in the Adobe Connect program, which is specially designed for distance learning, interactive classes, and information exchange.

The practice of working with graduate students at Bauman Moscow State Technical University has shown the effectiveness of using a variety of Internet resources in distance learning to teach professional communication and the language of the specialty. In particular, Russian as a foreign language has proved to be a very productive way to attract to the main distance learning course such an additional educational resource as the online course "Academic Writing in Russian and English", posted on the "National Open Education Platform"(https://openedu.ru/). The proposed course forms the skills of correct use of grammatical constructions of scientific style when writing annotations, abstracts of technical articles in Russian. Viewing video lectures and performing homework and tests within the studied topics contributes to the development of adequate language and speech skills necessary for the successful implementation of educational and scientific tasks in the chosen professional field.

Such a combination of all educational materials, including video lectures, webinars and other resources, allows to bring the distance format closer to the real educational process and is one of the forms of organizing training in the pandemic.

Distance learning of Russian as a foreign language for students of the preparatory faculty

Teaching foreign students in the discipline “Russian as a Foreign Language” in February-June was carried out in a distant format. In order to implement new approaches to teaching and due to the changed conditions, the training of foreign students included several stages: 1) teaching using distance courses (February-April); 2) teaching using Skype, Zoom, Dingtalk, Google services (March-May); 3) comprehensive teaching using distance courses and programs Skype, Zoom, Ding talk, Google services (June).

At the 1st stage of distance learning for students who did not return from China after the winter holidays, multi-level distance courses were developed on the basis of already created on the Moodle platform: for pre-bachelor students, for pre-master students, for students from Beijing, for pre-bachelor and pre-master students (advanced level) (4th course). The courses were placed in the electronic educational system of Bauman Moscow State Technical University (http://e-learning.bmstu.ru/int/). To get access, students were attached to the course via email. All the necessary teaching materials (manuals, additional information, videos, audio files, presentations, exercises, tables, etc.) were included in the course as the program progressed. The control was carried out by checking written works (homework, dictation, control works) and tests with automatic verification. The advantages of such teaching consisted in the fact that in order to ensure the continuity of the educational process and the impossibility of implementing other communication, except for postal, the creation of distance courses was the most successful solution to the issue. The main disadvantage of this stage of teaching was the lack of direct contact with the students which implies the development of skills in the aspects of “Speaking” and “Reading”.

At the 2nd stage, in connection with the transition to a distance learning of all students, the following forms of education were introduced in a foreign audience:

1) classes were conducted using the Skype program. The advantages were the simplicity and convenience of using this program by teachers and students, the ease of attaching all participants to any group by receiving an invitation, the unlimited time of the lesson (the duration of one lesson is from 4 to 6 hours), and the availability of broadcasting from mobile devices. An important point was the fact that students from China (50% of the contingent) were able to work in this program. The disadvantages were the deterioration of the quality of communication when more than 15 participants joined; deterioration of communication when the microphone and camera are turned on, even by one student; absence of a “board” for recording information during the lesson (you need to exit the demo mode and open another document or use chat). In addition, with the unstable Internet and using an old computer at home, Skype turned out to be a “complicated” program for downloading information and opening even the simplest files.

2) classes were conducted using the Zoom program. In this case, unlike Skype, there was always a stable connection and good quality of communication with constant connection of cameras and microphones of all participants in the session, there was a “board” for taking notes during the lesson. Among the disadvantages: reduced time of 1 free lesson - 40 minutes, constant availability of links to new sessions is required (if a lesson is 4 hours - 4 or 5 sessions).

3) the classes were conducted using the Dingtalk program. The most important advantage was that all students from China could join the learning process and not experience problems, since this program is the basis for studying in this country.

Control was carried out with the help of Google services, where teaching materials for each lesson and homework were posted. A link to these materials was sent to students by email. This allowed students to access the materials and download the necessary information at any time. Students and teachers used e-mail and a WhatsApp group to quickly solve problems when they had organizational or educational questions.

As teachers and students mastered different forms and methods of distance learning, a complex approach was formed, including the combination of all the types described above – 3d stage. Depending on the technical capabilities of students and teachers and the quality of communication, a program was selected with the help of which the lesson was conducted: Skype or Zoom. The majority of teachers (90%) conducted classes using Skype. Written homework assignments were sent to students using Google services. In the distance courses, automated grammar tests were created on various topics, allowing students to test their knowledge, see the result, and prepare for exams. The integrated approach had all the benefits described above and significantly increased the effectiveness of teaching.