Language Teaching Of Master’s Degree Students Based On The Open Educational Environment

Abstract

The aspects related to the use of an open educational environment for teaching a foreign language to Master’s Degree students are considered in this article. Despite the fact that this is a fairly new phenomenon, language open educational courses for different areas of specialist training have been developed and are widely used. For the modern digital economy, competent personnel are required and for their preparation it is necessary to introduce digital tools of educational activity and include them in the information environment. Today, the use of e-learning, computer and distance learning technologies comes to prominence compared with traditional teaching methods. The current level of development of information technology, the equipment of universities with computers and the access to the Internet allow talking about the prerequisites for bringing foreign languages to a new level. The options for the basis of the educational environment that can be used to create language educational courses are analyzed in the article.

Keywords: Language teachingopen educational environmentdistance technologiesmaster’s degree students

Introduction

In connection with the formation of a new social system (information society), huge changes took place in the world at the beginning of the 21st century. An important direction in the development of the information society is the IT penetration of education - the process of providing education with a methodology and teaching techniques for the optimal use of modern information technologies.

Currently, a number of initiatives are being implemented aimed at creating the necessary conditions for the development of the digital economy in Russia, which increases the country's competitiveness and ensures economic growth and national sovereignty. For this purpose, an Information Society Development Strategy for 2017-2030 and the program “Digital Economy of the Russian Federation” have been developed.

The digital economy needs competent personnel, especially they are necessary in the field of engineering, and for their preparation it is necessary to properly modernize the education system, including vocational training, bring educational programs in line with the needs of a changing society, introduce digital learning tools and enable them into the information environment, to provide the opportunity for citizens to be educated at anytime and anywhere on an individual educational path over a life.

Problem Statement

Nowadays, among the problems theoretically and experimentally solved by the method of foreign languages, the main one is the problem of internal and external motivation in most students of technical universities. This issue raises a number of problems of both scientific and practical content. In particular:

• forming students' motivation for learning;

• providing each student with individually - adapted teaching aids;

• giving students the opportunity to engage in an individual schedule.

Research Questions

The study raised the following questions.

• How can we provide Master’s Degree students with individually - adapted teaching aids?

• Which methods can be applied to engage in an individual schedule for Master’s Degree students?

• What are the advantages of using e-learning, computer and distance learning technologies in comparison with traditional teaching methods?

Purpose of the Study

It is assumed that the answers to the posed research questions will help to achieve the goal and will contribute to the development of recommendations to improve methods of teaching a foreign language.

Research Methods

Findings

An open environment is a modern trend in the training of specialists in various fields of knowledge. Researchers of this relatively new phenomenon note that one of the main problems faced by language MOOCs is that language learning is based on skills rather than knowledge. Practical skill requires joint training, while most of the existing courses follow an instructive approach that does not necessarily foster collaboration. Thus, teachers’ task is to create conditions that stimulate discussion and interaction between students ( Barcena et al., 2014; Borshcheva, 2017).

As some researches state, the online technologies help students gain professional knowledge through active learning strategies, as interactive classes provide students with more flexibility than traditional campus-based courses ( Manganello et al., 2019).

Using the techniques above the study has been conducted. The participants of the study were Master’s Degree students of the Institute of Engineering and Economics (Reshentnev Siberian State University of Science and Technology). The material used in this study comprised the electronic course "English for masters studies", articles found and analyzed by students.

The course consists of three modules: Writing summary of the text, Publishing in scientific journals, My scientific research. All three modules are provided with audio instructions, written instructions to the tasks, vocabulary, different tasks on the topics (tests, multiple choice exercises, answering questions, etc.) During the course students did the following tasks: reading and summarizing scientific articles in English, writing articles, preparing presentations, which provided students with a motivating context through which they could practice their English by reading, analyzing and writing. Moreover, work with scientific material and rules how to prepare summary, articles, abstracts and presentations helped students learn new vocabulary, especially scientific terminology which is essential for their future scientific work.

The students were questioned and tested before they started doing the course and after finishing the course. The results were analyzed and can be presented in the following categories:

• language skills

• critical thinking skills

Students improved their writing, reading and listening skills. Speaking skills were mastered when students gave their presentations. According to the questionnaire, the students found the course challenging and useful. They emphasized the importance of studying academic wring rules, which is essential as they carry out scientific research. The tasks and instructions to them are simple and clear. Also, the opportunity to do a distant course turned out to be very important to Master’s Degree students.

It has been widely accepted that critical thinking is an important and vital topic in modern education. Critical thinking is a mode of thinking about any subject, content or problem in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skilful analyzing, assessing and reconstructing it ( Dewey, 1997; Litovchenko & Piland, 2019). All students state that they have become more conscious readers and started to see things from different perspectives.

Conclusion

Open education is education accessible to everyone. Its development will inevitably lead to a significant revision of traditional teaching methods and technologies. It is based on modern computer network technologies and is a logical continuation of distance learning. The use of an open educational environment allows: to provide all students with free access to the materials of the curriculum; to free the teacher of the need to print or photocopy materials for students; to evaluate all students’ tasks, which is especially topical when working with undergraduates; to make the process of learning a foreign language attractive and understandable for future specialists in the field of engineering; to bring part of the program into an independent extracurricular form of work and to help solve the problem of reducing the number of class hours. The use of electronic didactic tools in teaching foreign languages ​​should not be taken as an additional workload for the teacher. The use of modern technology makes the process of learning languages ​​easier and more interesting for both the teacher and the student.

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