Search Results (6)

The priority of the competence approach aimed at developing professional competency of higher education students reflects the labour market need for graduates with the skills required by their speciality and relevant to the interrelated disciplines. In the case of law students, such skills include awareness of both domestic and foreign legal systems, as well as full communicative competence in the foreign language they are going to use. A key component of foreign language communicative competence is pragmatic competence—that is, knowledge about how a foreign language is used appropriately in a legal context. The research conducted contributes to the issue of pragmatic competence training by means of a practice-oriented method—that is, the case method. The significance of the case method is determined by the twofold goal of developing pragmatic competence via pseudo-real legal situations that provide students with legal knowledge, as well as stimulate them to be effective communicators in the legal sphere. The study took place at SPbPU and involved 120 s-year law students. The experiment conducted was aimed at comparing the case method and traditional methods used for teaching Legal English, particularly the first legal advice strategy—a component of pragmatic competence. A specific feature of the experiment was that it was organized in the form of distance learning. To collect and analyse the data of the study, a qualitative and a quantitative method were applied. The results of the study showed a high efficiency of the case method for fostering pragmatic competence in an ESP course for law students in comparison with traditional methods, which were not very efficient. Besides, the experiment showed that an on-line format may be an adequate methodological means of effectively achieving the goal in a foreign language training for professional needs in a course with a time limit. Full article

Vocabulary knowledge is a prerequisite for mastering any foreign language. It takes a lot of time and effort to develop English as a foreign language (EFL) vocabulary skills. Efficient ways to facilitate this process should be studied and analyzed. The present study aimed to investigate the role of the Discord application in teaching and learning EFL vocabulary. Discord is a free messenger with support for IP telephony and video conferencing, as well as the possibility to create public and private chats for exchanging text and voice messages. The study relied on pre-test and post-test design to get the necessary data of one experimental and one control group, 80 university students altogether. The results of the pre-test showed no significant difference between the two groups. The experimental group was taught with the help of the Discord application, while the control group was dealing with the traditional educational process, that is, 180 min every week in a classroom with a textbook and no electronic educational resources. Results of the t-test indicated that the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group on a researcher-made vocabulary post-test. A post-treatment speaking test was administered—the participants took part in speaking interviews where they were asked to give a short speech on one of the topics studied during the experimental training. The representatives of the experimental group managed to use more vocabulary items per person correctly (pronunciation, lexical combinability, etc.). The findings revealed that the suggested way of using the Discord application may positively influence the acquisition of EFL vocabulary and its further application in speaking. Hence, it is recommended that the Discord application be used as a tool in the EFL vocabulary teaching and learning process to reinforce in-class tasks and activities. Full article

In modern higher education, there was a change in the educational paradigm, when the emphasis shifted to the formation of competencies. The goal of the competence approach is to improve the quality of education, which is impossible without the use of educational technologies that guarantee a steady effective result. The priority of teaching foreign languages to future lawyers is the foreign speaking skills formation in general and the monological ones in particular. The introduction of educational technology in the process of monological speaking skills formation, including a set of methods and techniques such as peer review, discussion, working with the text, etc., took place over the course of the pedagogical experiment. Qualitative and quantitative data analysis allowed us to determine the difference in the level of the monological speaking skills formation in experimental and control groups at all stages of the experiment conducted. The effectiveness of the developed technology is determined by the significance of the adaptation stage, the use of the peer review method, which implements the potential of students’ metacognitive skills, and the possibility to change the role while evaluating students’ answers. Full article

Strong communication skills, in varied professional settings, have become an absolute necessity for young professionals. Therefore, university educators are challenged to provide novice specialists with the effective foreign language training that could bring the real professional world into the classroom. This study suggests an innovative method for teaching communication skills to students, through the use of real-life scenarios, drawn from the professional context. The core objective of the research was to define whether the scenario-based instruction could effectively enhance the development of professional communication skills of students in the context of university foreign language training. The data were collected through active observation and critical incidents technique, analyzed and summarized by means of descriptive statistics. The results of the study indicate the efficacy of scenario-based communication training in higher education. However, scenario-based instruction requires careful assessment of learners’ needs and expectations, thoughtful selection and design of teaching materials, and the development of an active learning environment. Full article

The COVID-19 pandemic has tremendously affected higher education systems in Russia and all over the world, forcing to transform curriculum into an online format, which is a challenge for all the educational process participants. The current study discusses the implementation of online learning amid the COVID-19 pandemic in the Russian higher education context and investigates the challenges experienced by university teachers during this period to define their readiness for online education. To address the above-mentioned issues, a study was conducted in Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University. A variety of methods of scientific and pedagogical research were used including systematic structural analysis, synthesis, work with research papers, the generalization of experience and experimental work, observation, surveys, etc., with 87 university teachers asked to respond to several sets of questions describing their online teaching experience after the launch of online education amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis of the participants’ answers helped to identify the following main challenges experienced by university teachers: computer literacy level, the university electronic environment and support, academic staff readiness and students’ readiness for online learning, the last two being the most important hindering the implementation of the efficient online education process. It was also underlined by most respondents that methodological work of a teacher in a digital educational environment differs from conventional teaching methods. Thus, psychological, technological, methodological support and teachers’ professional development programs are of vital importance to minimize the negative impact of the rapid changes of the educational process and to ensure efficient online education. Full article

Information and communication technologies transform modern education into a more available learning matrix. One of the unexplored aspects of open education is the constant communicative interaction within the student group by using social media. The aim of the study was to determine principal functions of student-led communication in the educational process, the method for assessing its strong points and the disadvantages disrupting traditional learning. For the primary study of the phenomenon, we used methods that made it possible to propose approaches to further analysis. Netnography is the main research method defining the essence and characteristics of the student-led peer-communication. In our research, we applied data visualization, analytical and quantitative methods and developed a set of quantitative indicators that can be used to assess various aspects of student communication in chats. The elaborated visual model can serve as a simple tool for diagnosing group communication processes. We revealed that online group chats perform a support function in learning. They provide constant informational resource on educational and organizational issues and create emotional comfort. Identified features serve to define shortcomings (e.g., lack of students’ readiness to freely exchange answers to assignments) and significant factors (e.g., underutilized opportunities for self-organization) that exist in the modern system of higher education. Full article