Methodological aspects of modular English language training for non-linguistic students

The search for effective methods and technologies for teaching English in higher technical schools does not lose its relevance at the present time: theoretical scientists and practical teachers conduct research and demonstrate significant success, striving to modernize the process of teaching English in the context of a shortage of educational time and a strictly formulated didactic goal, which is to form and develop the foreign language communicative competence of a future engineer at the level of 2 and higher. It is not particularly surprising that today the curriculum for bachelor's degree training in most domestic technical universities provides for mastering English in a volume not exceeding two academic hours per week, while the duration of the English course does not exceed two or three academic semesters. If we take into account that about 55% of first — year students in the entrance test, as a rule, demonstrate proficiency in English at a level of A 2, 35% — In 1 and only 10% - In 2, it is quite obvious that the amount of study time equal to 100-120 hours is not enough for students to acquire the necessary competencies in English. However, this time resource, as practice shows, is not always sufficient to achieve the goal of training.

The required amount of study time for students to master the appropriate level of the desired competence is recommended in the document "pan-European competence of foreign language proficiency: study, teaching, evaluation", according to which a minimum of 540 hours of intensive work is required to master a foreign language communicative competence at the B2 level. Let us highlight the main conditions under which modular English language training can be successfully implemented in the educational process of a technical University. These include:

• 1)    the formation of study groups should take into account the data obtained during the preliminary testing in English, including the results of testing in reading, listening, speaking and writing;

• 2)    development, adjustment and subsequent modernization of the English language training program should be carried out on the basis of taking into account the interdisciplinary integration of its English language modules and modules of disciplines that form the General professional training of future engineers;

• 3)    the design of the educational trajectory of English language acquisition for each student and the study group as a whole should be implemented in close accordance with the program of modular English language training (depending on the curriculum of a particular educational institution);

• 4)    each training module must necessarily adapt to the individual educational trajectory of the student;

• 5)    individual independent work of the student with the module material should be provided through specially developed electronic learning tools. The selected conditions allowed us to formulate the main characteristics of the module as a structural-organizational and structural-content unit of the discipline. the Adaptability of the module as an integral system of educational elements and subelements consists in its ability to adapt to the set didactic goals and learning tasks aimed at mastering students' foreign language communicative competence, namely:

• 1)    understand the general content of complex texts on abstract and specific topics, including highly specialized texts;

• 2)    speak quickly and spontaneously enough to constantly communicate with native speakers without much difficulty for either party;

• 3)    make clear, detailed messages on various topics, present your view on the main problem, show the advantages and disadvantages of different opinions;

• 4)    create and apply in practice the products of written communication activities;

• 5)    possess a vocabulary and a set of grammatical structures for understanding the content of complex texts on abstract and specific topics, including highly specialized texts, and spontaneous communication with native speakers on various topics. Following the above, the training module should be designed in such a way as to maximize the student's achievement of the tasks set in each training element and sub-element of the module.

The second characteristic of the module is the integration or ability of the module to combine elements of the content of modules of general professional disciplines along with foreign language material. Let's demonstrate this with a concrete example. The modular English language program has been implemented for more than eight years, during which it has undergone numerous changes, both in terms of the volume of classroom load, and the goals and content of training in General.

After graduation, graduates can work as engineers of control and measuring devices, design technicians at enterprises of the electronic and radio-electronic industry, metallurgy and chemical production, space and aviation instrumentation. During the development of the modular English language training program, the requirements for future engineers in the field of instrument engineering were studied; a list of topics and problems of professional interest for future specialists was compiled; the best examples of didactic material presented in textbooks of foreign publishers and on the Internet were selected; glossaries on the subject of modules were prepared, which included lexical units in English and their equivalents in Uzbek; grammatical material necessary for oral and written communication was selected; a list of oral and written communication products that students should perform within each program module was identified; a schedule of control measures aimed at identifying and evaluating the formation of the level of foreign language communicative competence of students at all stages of training has been compiled.

The greatest interest in technical terms was aroused by those projects that were practice-oriented and had reinforcement in the form of actually created products, for example, a robot for watering indoor plants or a robot assistant for the elderly. As a linguistic value of the presented projects, it should be noted that, firstly, almost every speech that accompanied the project involved a wide range of lexical units and grammatical structures that were worked out earlier in the classroom, and secondly, students independently designed the texts of their speech with an orientation to internationally recognized standards in the field of preparation and publication of research results: introduction, relevance and analysis of the problem, the purpose and objectives of the research, the course and results of the research. Next, let us formulate and summarize the main conclusions and results of the study.

First, the active vocabulary of trainees has been supplemented with more than 100 lexical units that directly form the professional thesaurus of a specialist in the field of robotics. Secondly, the grammatical aspect of oral and written speech has significantly improved, as students have seen the real application of grammatical structures and constructions in the process of reading and discussing excerpts of popular science and scientific and technical texts, listening to excerpts of lectures, and so on. Students demonstrated their knowledge of grammatical material in the process of creating oral communication products-short text messages, dialogues based on proposed situations (at a factory, in a laboratory, at an exhibition of engineering achievements, etc.), educational and scientific reports at a conference; written communication products - various types of essays (with elements of argumentation, expressing an assessment opinion, etc.), texts of educational and scientific articles, etc. Third, the information culture of students, represented by a combination of information worldview and a system of knowledge and skills that provide targeted independent activities to optimally meet individual information needs using both traditional and new information technologies, has also undergone significant changes.

The didactic material used in the module served as a basis for raising students awareness of certain aspects of robotics that were previously unknown to students.

As a perspective for the development of modular English language training for students of non-linguistic areas of training, the author of this work sees the provision of each training module with materials for individual independent work, placed in an electronic environment; the compilation of a single dictionary-a lexical minimum for students.