The relevance of this research is due to significant changes in the labor market caused by the transformation of the modern world, when the demand for professionals who can study in a digital environment, as well as carry out cross-cultural communication and interaction with remote business partners, has sharply increased. This article identifies the main difficulties arising in the process of teaching intergroup dialogue and professionally-oriented interaction to non-linguistic students and also proposes new organizational and methodological approaches aimed at overcoming these difficulties. The aim of the research is to test the experimental methods of distance teaching of dialogic speech as a means of adaptation of non-linguistic students to intergroup communication in the digital environment. Such research methods as the experiment, observation, and the method of open and closed-ended questionnaires were used. The statistical significance of the obtained data was tested with the help of the student’s paired t-test and the Fisher test. The article describes the experimental distance teaching of communication in a virtual environment simulating professional intercultural interaction. The organizational and methodological approaches elaborated by the authors give an opportunity to form an educational foreign language environment, which trains non-linguistic students in intergroup communication with remote partners. The pedagogical tools tested in practice contribute to the effectiveness of teaching students with a low level of foreign language proficiency. The materials presented in the article allow us to create new technologies of foreign language distance teaching and will be in demand by specialists in the field of higher education pedagogies.
Author : Elena P. Shishmolina
Overcoming Barriers in Teaching EFL to Non-Linguistic Students
The transition to the knowledge-based economy requires a new generation of professionals with a complex set of skills and competencies. These include English language skills, which will help them to merge into the international professional community. One dimension of this challenge is finding effective unconventional approaches to mass EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teaching for non- linguistic university students, to increase their motivation, interest in learning English, and their willingness to use this foreign language actively by lowering communication barriers.
In this study, we investigate the effectiveness of an experimental EFL teaching and learning framework, aimed at helping non-linguistic majors students to develop an English communication competence through an artificial bilingual environment. Statistical analysis and comparison of the results of the students’ surveys suggest that using more unconventional activities and a strong focus on students’ social interactions, interdisciplinary language activities and heterogeneity of study groups, builds students’ intrinsic motivation, removes communication barriers and increases the need to use English in real life.