Methodology of application of the technology “collaborative learning” in the course “English for specific purposes” in the faculties of international relations (in English)

interpreting the information presented in political articles. Next, they often do not have strong linguistic competence that would allow them to read and understand authentic media texts in English.

Besides, many students do not know how to make inferences from what they read and how to understand the ideas that are not stated openly but just implied. Finally, they have a weak ability to think critically and challenge the ideas that they see in articles. All these difficulties can significantly impede students’ progress. To help them rise to the challenge we applied a collaborative approach that proved to be highly instrumental in facilitating the development of skills required by the media content analysis and considerably increased the effectiveness of the analysis conducted by the students. While working together and observing each other’s performance they get an opportunity to handle the challenges mentioned above.

The aim of the article is to describe a new methodology based on the collaborative approach to media content analysis devised by the authors and implemented in ESP classes which greatly simplifies developing IR students’ professional competencies while working with media resources.

Theoretical and methodological framework of applying collaborative learning to media content analysis. Media texts of different types comprehensively represent social reality and shape our understanding of the world. This is the reason why media resources can be used for educational purposes as a learning material. According to D. Buckingham and J. Sefton-Green, through media students raise their awareness of sociopolitical issues as they begin to understand how political dynamics define the stories presented in the media [3, p. 98–104]. This understanding can be achieved through media content analysis.

Media content analysis is often defined as a strategy that helps the researchers to make valid inferences through identifying specific characteristics within text [14, p. 5]. It provides insights into the messages and images represented in mass media.

Applying media content analysis in the classroom can raise students’ awareness of the issues which are currently at the top of the global agenda. This method teaches them to use different literacy practices so that they can decide whether the information in the media is reliable enough and can be trusted. It also teaches to analyze and evaluate facts, challenge some claims and discredit misinformation.

To critically engage with media content and gain a deeper understanding of how it shapes public opinion, it is essential to identify the framing used in the article. According to R.M. Entman, articles typically contain frames that identify a specific problem, define the underlying cause of the problem, make a moral judgement of the problem and suggest one or several solutions to that problem [6, p. 52]. Journalists use frames to help break down complex situations into content that can be easily understood and consumed by the audience [10]. Frames can be understood as particular principles of selection, emphasizing, presentation and interpretation of events. As E. Goffman and R.M. Enthman notice, we experience life through frames. What we know about the world around us depends on the frames we use to analyze and understand reality. Framing shapes perceptions, highlights certain aspects of a story and provides a context that guides the audience’s understanding [6, p. 52; 8, p. 21]. As media have the power to define the public agenda, the way media frame certain events influence the way people think about them. Most studies dealing with media content analysis touch upon the existence of one or another frame focusing on how using them can shape public opinion. The frames used in the articles on political issues often fall into several types.

Confl ict frame focuses on disagreements or confrontations between parties or countries, it emphasizes opposing viewpoints and can create a narrative of winners andlosers. Such frames emphasize conflict between individuals, groups, or institutions as a means of capturing audience interest [12, p. 95].

Moral frame presents issues in terms of moral implications often appealing to the audience’s sense of “right” and “wrong”. It can be used in discussions about social issues, justice and community values [12, p. 96; 5, p. 641 – 642].

Political frame focuses on implications of news events, including the actions and motives of political leaders, policy debates and the influence of ideologies. Observing and comparing political frames play an essential role in understanding power interactions within a society and evolving changes in public attention [11, p.22; 25].

Crises frame emphasizes urgency and the need for immediate actions, often used in reporting urgent political situations, natural disasters, health emergencies. Framing a crisis in a political context not only sets the narrative surrounding events but also contributes to policy responses [15, p. 6].

Overall, identifying the frame contributes to a deeper understanding of media narratives and fosters more informed, critical engagement with media content. Recognizing how framing works allows individuals to understand its potential impact on their attitudes and beliefs about important issues. While teaching students to identify frames of the articles it should be emphasized that relying on few media resources which employ a restricted number of frames to report on the events can lead to a very limited perspective of reality and a wide range of media resources reporting on the same issue should be analyzed in case a more objective and better-grounded opinion on the issue is to be formed.

While implementing media content analysis in the classroom we applied a collaborative approach that turned out to be highly instrumental in helping students enhance their critical media literacy and mental capacity for explaining the ideological implications that political media discourse represents. Collaborative learning is one of the two most prevalent active learning strategies widely used in higher education. Active learning, as С. Major states, is perceived broadly in scientific literature and presents a learning process in which students are engaged as dynamic participants and act intentionally to go into depth of the studied material, demonstrate

МЕТОДИКА ПРИМЕНЕНИЯ ТЕХНОЛОГИИ «ОБУЧЕНИЕ В СОТРУДНИЧЕСТВЕ» В КУРСЕ «АНГЛИЙСКИЙ ЯЗЫК ДЛЯ СПЕЦИАЛЬНЫХ ЦЕЛЕЙ» НА ФАКУЛЬТЕТАХ МЕЖДУНАРОДНЫХ ОТНОШЕНИЙ and improve their higher order thinking skills, reveal their interest, curiosity, and enthusiasm in performing the tasks [9, p. 20].

The active learning approach makes a difference to a student’s learning. We share the point of view expressed by many researchers that active learning as well as a traditional one has the aim to build basic knowledge but in addition it has more complex, higher-level objectives [9, p. 25]. It allows practicing and improving skills to analyze and evaluate the information and applying critical thinking skills while studying academic content. This approach requires a lot of creativity and noticeably improves learning productivity.

B.L. Smith and J.T. MacGregor describe collaborative learning as a term that encompasses a set of approaches that encourage students and teachers to cooperate and unite their intellectual efforts [13, p. 11]. While working together students try to understand various issues, find solutions or create a product. Collaborative learning gives them an opportunity to get new ideas from their peers.

Actual development can result from self-learning. At this level, individuals learn and do tasks independently without any assistance. On the other hand, only collaborative work of individuals peers, or more experienced grown-ups) moves potential development forward because students learn new things from their more skilled and experienced peers. It alleviates further advancement of their skills. In other words, what students learn to do today together, they will be able to do tomorrow independently.

Devising a methodology of media text analysis within a collaborative approach. We devised and implemented in our ESP classes the methodology of media text analysis within a collaborative approach that emphasizes the importance of communication among students during the learning process.

When collaborative activities occur, learners enlarge their knowledge storage, at the same time they do not just passively absorb the knowledge, but they also question some information, criticize the position of other students, argue with them, and do other critical thinking activities. In this case some students are involved in the activities which include the elements of teaching known as one of the most effective ways of learning, while others get the opportunity to learn new things.

Working with the media content within a collaborative approach can consist of two stages: the first stage is preparatory or individual and the second one is collaborative.

Preparatory (individual) stage. In the first stage students are given an article on a political issue and asked to identify the key ideas, the message of the article and the communicative goal of the author of the article. The message of the article is the most important component of the text, the purpose of the author’s statement and the semantic center of the article. Identifying it usually presents a challenge for students. To help students find the way to rise to the challenge, the teacher can apply several methods which are well known and are not the focus of this article.

One more important task in the first stage of the analysis is to identify the language the author of the article uses to frame the topic and influence the perception of the audience. Journal- ists use different linguistic forms to present news in order to talk influentially, clearly, stylistically and sometimes tactfully [7, p. 29]. These linguistic forms have different applications and meet different goals. We share the opinion of the scientists who believe that language is a tool used to promote an ideology, so selecting words plays a significant role in shaping the audience’s opinion and manipulating its behavior [7, p. 31; 34].

Therefore, analyzing the language used in the article helps identify moral judgements made by the journalists and the extent to which the opinion presented in the article is biased. In this stage students are asked to identify how the language of the media text is used to manipulate the opinion of the audience on the issue discussed, whether the language is used to express the position in line with the political institutions’ dominant ideology or to support the opposite opinion.

This way students develop the skills to understand the idea behind the words and reveal the hidden goals behind the press messages, that is they learn to find out what is kept from the public and what is shown as natural to make people believe some ideas are true and are not to be challenged.

Finally, in this stage students can be asked to summarize the main points of the article in their own words and discuss how effectively the evidence supports the claims made.

Collaborative stage. In the collaborative stage students are asked to identify ideas that they find interesting, controversial or worth discussing. They are encouraged to ask questions about the problems raised in the article and then they must put all these ideas and questions in a table shared on Google disk so that all students can get access to the table and see ideas and questions chosen by other members of the group. During the class students work together. They find the ideas of their groupmates that resonate with them most and provide their opinion on them. Participants of the activity, whose ideas are chosen, provide their opinion too, agreeing, disagreeing with others or providing a look at the issue from a different perspective. The same activity is done with the questions. Developing critical questioning is an important skill that helps to get deeper understanding and reduce prejudice. Students are asked to read other participants’ questions and answer those of them they find interesting and deserving attention. Then the members of the group whose questions are answered provide their own views on the issue as well.

Here is an abstract of the shared table filled in by the students during the collaborative media text analysis Table).

Students were asked to read and analyze the article published in the Guardian on the 3rd of November 2024. The article was published shortly before the election day in the USA, and it was devoted to the current situation in the presidential race with the analysis of the alignments of the voting groups supporting Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. The article falls into a political frame and features the motives of the candidates to a high office. After analyzing it and identifying the key ideas students managed to identify the message of the article which can be presented like this: Neither of the two US candidates holds the lead in the current presidential campaign with Kamala Harris supported mostly by black Americans and women and Donald Trump relying on white men who pin their hopes on the return to traditional values.

Table

Collaborative analysis of the article “The Presidential Race is Far Tighter than Democrats probably realize” (The Guardian, 03.11.2024)

Title	John Zogby The Presidential Race is Far Tighter than Democrats probably realize (published in the Guardian on the 3rd of November 2024)
Message	Neither of the two US candidates holds the lead in the current presidential campaign with Kamala Harris supported mostly by black Americans and women and Donald Trump relying on white men who pin their hopes on the return to traditional values.
Surnames of students	The ideas to be discussed	Questions to the problems raised	Linguistic devices that frame the article (Which of the two candidates does the author side with?)
Student 1	Trump’s latest gambit is patronizing women by telling them they do not need abortion to achieve self-actualization and empowerment, that he will protect them, that they don’t need to be worrying their pretty little heads about abortion rights	What impact can addressing gender issues have on the outcomes of the presidential election?	1.    Trump’s calling his opponent a diversity hire. 2.    Intriguing, fascinating dynamic
Student 2	Men are finding it harder to define their careers and future, they fear they are losing ground	What can shift the alignments of the groups normally voting for the representative of one party?	1.    Trump’s latest gambit 2.    To do aggressive male thing about Trump)
Student 3	Trump picking up such a larger piece of the Black turnout could hurt the Democrats significantly	What accounts for the “gender gap” in voting alignments?	Unprecedented misogyny and downright hat
Student 4	Trump and his supporters continue to promise a return of America, where “Girls were girls and men were men”	What makes Trump’s program so appealing to young men?	1.    …women don’t need to be worrying their pretty little heads about abortion rights 2.    …the same world where communities were white, and the US was always right

МЕТОДИКА ПРИМЕНЕНИЯ ТЕХНОЛОГИИ «ОБУЧЕНИЕ В СОТРУДНИЧЕСТВЕ» В КУРСЕ «АНГЛИЙСКИЙ ЯЗЫК ДЛЯ СПЕЦИАЛЬНЫХ ЦЕЛЕЙ» НА ФАКУЛЬТЕТАХ МЕЖДУНАРОДНЫХ ОТНОШЕНИЙ to elaborate on what other students said on the issue. This was an effective way to engage more students in the discussion and let them practice their speaking and reasoning skills. This activity also gave students the opportunity to better understand the positions of the two candidates and the interests of their voters that the candidates had to take into account. The issue that aroused the biggest interest among students was the issue about D. Trump’s relying on a return of the leadership position of men in the society.

The proposed collaborative strategy can work more effectively if it is implemented in an engaging learning environment created by teachers who can encourage students to think critically about issues raised in political articles and develop a deeper understanding of the messages they convey.

Conclusion. Collaborative learning can make political media texts analysis a more effective educational practice in ESP classes and facilitate the development of the competencies that specialists in the field of IR are required to have. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology within a collaborative approach to media text analysis in an ESP class is ensured by several factors.

First, the table shared on Google disk provides students with the opportunity to see the ideas chosen by their groupmates, encouraging them to pay attention to the issues they have failed to notice while reading the article on their own. It makes them think about the issues they have not thought of before and give their opinion on them. Observing the performance of their peers, less advanced students learn to complete challenging tasks that require higher-order thinking skills. They learn how to critically assess the views presented in the article, understand and interpret the ideas which are not reported openly, reveal biases and the communicative goal of the author of the article.

Second, student-initiated conversations help students build strong background knowledge. They get deeper insight into the global issues such as wars, military conflicts, immigration, xenophobia, racism, environmental degradation, et cetera and form better-grounded opinions on them as these issues are viewed from different angles and opposing opinions are provided and discussed.

Third, this methodology helps students to enhance their foreign language communicative competence as they practice both extensive speaking and interacting with others in English. They make use of political discourse vocabulary to get their ideas across, structure their messages and provide clear arguments. They also learn to take part in the discussion, respond to what has been said and agree or disagree with other speakers.

Fourth, the devised methodology serves as a tool that structures the media text analysis and makes it more comprehensive.

Fifth, even though collaborative, the proposed methodology rules out the risk of students not being engaged in the discussion as every student has to complete several individual tasks such as choosing thought-provoking ideas and providing their opinions on the ideas chosen by their peers.

So, the collaborative media text analysis methodology described in the article proves to be an efficient educational tool that contributes to the development of IR students’ professional competencies in ESP classes and can be implemented in any ESP course regardless of the area of study.