Suleimanova V.R.

Crimean Engineering and Pedagogical University , Ukraine

SOME ASPECTS OF TEACHING ENGLISH TO TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

 

In recent decades all-round and regular international communication has become possible due to expansion of professional contacts, open information interchange, availability of books in English. Knowing a foreign language offers opportunities to establish educational, cultural and professional contacts. English is the language of international communication, so to join international community English speaking engineers are in great demand. Basic scientific literature is written in English. It is impossible to use the Internet without knowing English. Different types of communication are held in English.

The issues of effective foreign language teaching have been studied by such outstanding scientists as Bukhbinder V., Galperin P., Martynova R., Passov E., Skalkin V., Tarnopolskiy O., who worked out a problem of forming students’ professional English competence. Rogova G., Yelukhina N.,   Zimnyaya I., Kitaygorodskaya G., Kolker Y. studied the issues of teaching materials’ content, interesting tasks at different grade levels. Practical issues of teaching English have been studied by Harmer J., Rivers W.M., Temperley M.S. and others. Some methodological peculiarities of teaching English have been defined but there are still unsolved problems.

Despite realizing the necessity of knowing English by differently-skilled people and understanding its importance, the students of Technical Universities do not know it well enough. There are many reasons to explain this fact since teaching effective English communication is impossible until some problems are solved. Let ’ s try to analyze these problems .

Oral and written types of communication are to be developed while training. Means of oral communication are speaking and listening; means of written communication are reading and writing.  

The main goal of teaching is forming students’ communicative competence, which is developing skills of direct (speaking and listening) and indirect (reading and writing) communication. The hardest point in foreign language communication is aural reception. Oral communication which is especially important nowadays is impossible without understanding the speech of an interlocutor, for while communicating everyone is a speaker as well as a listener [2, p.101]. Which means of communication should we develop while teaching engineering students? Should we develop all four means equally or some of them should dominate?

The main method of teaching English at schools and at universities is grammar-thematic: a theme, relevant vocabulary and grammar. The knowledge is controlled by means of written tasks [4, p.15]. But being able to write doesn’t mean being able to speak. In addition, students have to rote numerous words and phrases to use them in their speech later, but without practical application they are quickly forgotten and become waste of time. After realizing this fact, students refuse to perform such tasks thinking that it is better to pay more attention to the subjects of professional training. The result is decrease in motivation to learn and communicate English. Such decrease is corroborated by poor knowledge of the language (not being able to express one’s ideas in English, lack of vocabulary, grammar structures), since many of engineering students did not pay due attention to this subject at school and it is perceived as not obligatory at the university, the wrong attitude to it is formed. Learning a few texts and some grammar does not develop enough speaking and listening skills to talk to and understand native speakers [4, p.19]. It is also not enough for the written communication through the Internet.

The students have poor skills of unassisted work. It is certain that learning success will be minimal if students do not work beyond the classroom. The task of an instructor is to develop and keep interest to additional independent language learning and communication.

Some more difficulties in teaching English communication to engineering students are caused by differences in writing and pronouncing words in English. Having no sufficient practice students do not recognize words when hearing them or write the words as they hear them. Due to scarce speech practice subconscious comprehension of internal language laws is not formed. Students’ constant-ready status and desire for informative perception of the foreign language ( aural reception skills ) are not formed. One of the ways to solve this problem is introducing telecommunications technologies into learning process. This will offer opportunities to communicate with native speakers. Another way is to give spontaneity based tasks. To perform them students’ memory should keep certain vocabulary and grammar to be retrieved in the fullness of time [4, p. 21, 45]. It can help to develop readiness of inclusion into communication situations.

Lack of English speaking surroundings does not only restrict the development of speaking skills but also holds back its formation limiting the speech by the frame of known, correct and previously learned [3, p. 9]. Additional explanations and more precise definitions without using natural language would affect the development of communication skills positively. It is hard to accomplish taking into account the lack of time allotted to teach English in Technical Universities and the fact that teaching without translation requires much time to comprehend the material.

Communication is interaction with other people. Its goal and result is interpretation of information and the motive of communication appears only when there is necessity of real communication. Communication skills are formed and developed only during communication activity, immersion into real situations.

Every utterance should be motivated. When there is no real need to say something, a student is put into “offered circumstances” and plays a role [1, p. 43].

Students’ fear to speak English should be mentioned too. It is explained by the fact that they make mistakes in their speech, which is perceived negatively due to the idea (developed at schools) that making mistakes means incomprehension, bad knowledge, low mark and as a result low motivation and reluctance to communicate using the foreign language. Technical University instructors should take this into account and correct students’ mistakes so that not to interrupt the speech but mainly while writing, when the students can refer to their mistakes and analyze them. Making mistakes is an integral part of the ability to express one’s thoughts.

We can conclude that there is no tendency to teach English communication to Technical University students. Instructors strive to develop mainly reading and writing skills though there are some cases when students know grammar but cannot combine words in a sentence. We think that all means of communication should be developed equally paying attention to individual needs of the students. Teaching material should be screened taking into consideration the type of the University, the future profession of the students, initial level of English, conditions and targets of teaching.

List of reference links:

1.                 Колкер Я.М. Практическая методика обучения иностранному языку / Я.М. Колкер, Е.С. Устинова, Т.М. Еналиева. – М.: Издательский центр «Академия», 2001. – 264 с.

2.                 Кузнецова Г.П. Обучение профессиональному общению в техническом вузе / Г.П. Кузнецова, В.П. Веретенникова, Н.В. Чугунова // Наукові праці ОНАЗ ім. О.С. Попова. – 2007. – № 1. – С.101-103.

3.                 Пассов Е.И. Коммуникативный метод обучения иноязычному говорению: [пособие для учителей] / Е.И. Пассов. – М.: Просвещение, 1991. – 223 с.

4.                 Синельников А.П. Психология обучения иностранным языкам / А.П. Синельников. – Х.: Изд. группа «Основа», 2009. – 128 с.

5.                 Harmer Jeremy The Practice of English Language Teaching / Jeremy Harmer. – Essex.: Pearson Educatiion Limited, 2007. – 448 p.