Teaching English to students non-philological specialties: work experience in groups with mixed abilities

In the context of deepening international cooperation, the need to establish strong economic, scientific and cultural relations, the role of a foreign language as a means of cross-cultural communication and dialogue is significantly increasing. Currently, English remains one of the most widely spoken languages of international communication. An integral part of professional training in a higher education institution is learn English. Practice shows that students often come across difficulties in mastering the studied language non-philological specialties, as they have a lower level of language training. In addition, students with mixed abilities (memory type, learning style, etc.) are trained in one academic group. Thus, the purpose of our article is to highlight the problems of teaching English to students of non – philological specialties and to offer methodological recommendations that contribute to their solution. In the methodology of teaching foreign languages, there are at least two points of view on the essence of the concept of "group of co-workers", mixed abilities." So, S. Bremner (Susan Bremner) believes that such a group represents students who have their own advantages and disadvantages and study at different speeds [1, p. 3-4]. According to Penny Ur, the term "heterogeneous class" should be used to refer to a group of students, since the term "mixed ability class" reflects the ability of students to use language skills and does not affect other aspects of language training [2, p.302 – 303].

In our opinion, a group with mixed abilities should be understood as a group of students with different abilities that affect the process of mastering the subject with your tongue. We believe that the term we have proposed takes into account the style learning (the type of perception of information, the prevailing type of motivation), the speed of learning and other aspects of language training. Studying the problems of teaching English to students of non-philological specialties requires determining the stages of training and the tasks of each of the stages. We believe that the language training process consists of 3 stages, namely: 1) organizational preparation stage (determination of the goals of the didactic process, selection of methodological support for the discipline, division of students into subgroups); 2) didactic stage (implementation of the goals of language training); 3) final stage (summing up and adjusting the educational process).

The first problem that arises at the organizational stage, this is the problem of forming training groups (subgroups). As Diana Hicks rightly points out, the formation of study groups is usually based on the results of tests, which often consist of grammatical exercises and are reduced only to filling in gaps [3, p.28]. In our opinion, the formation of training groups involves testing both receptive and productive skills. Let us offer a number of methodological recommendations for the formation of study groups: a) do not give preference to grammar tests and questions on multiple choice; b) texts for listening and reading should relate to the professional orientation of students, be small in volume and do not contain highly specialized vocabulary; c) priority is given to speaking on a situational topic.

No less acute at the preparatory stage is the problem the choice of educational and methodological support of the discipline. Decision this problem, in our opinion, is that the teacher selects textbooks and manuals in accordance with the following criteria: a) the professional orientation of the textbook; b) the feasible difficulty of the textbook; c) the authorship of domestic scientists-practitioners; d) the novelty of the textbook.

At the didactic stage, the teacher also faces a number of problems, the first of which is the low motivation of the student youth. The solution to this problem, in our opinion, is to establish a strong relationship between the level of English language proficiency and professional growth (it is advisable for the teacher to give examples from the lives of people who are important to students). No less relevant is the problem of the discrepancy between the phonetic and grammatical structure of the studied language a language with the structure of the native language. We can see ways to solve the problem in the following actions of the teacher:

• 1)    Appeal to the emotions and experiences of students (when studying the phoneme [w], students can imagine that they are greeting an old friend);

• 2)    Differentiation of ways of presenting language material (the selection should take into account the students ' abilities ;) are the use of algorithms and the dramatization of the form);

• 3)    Use of various creative tasks to practice phonetic and grammatical skills. The effectiveness of teaching English is also hindered by the problem of low foreign language speech activity of students, dictated by the small vocabulary of students and the fear of making a mistake. In our opinion, the problem can be eliminated if the teacher adheres to the following recommendations:

• 1)    Evaluate not only the presentation of speech, but also the content of the statement;

• 2)    Encourage students to peripheralize lexical units (if they do not know a certain lexeme);

• 3)    correct errors only after the statement;

• 4)    First of all, pay attention to gross errors (leading to misunderstanding or distorting the meaning of the statement).

The above-mentioned reasons act as a catalyst for another problem that manifests itself in the process of teaching English to students of non-philological specialties. The essence of the problem lies in the small volume of written statements (compilation of students ' written works). In our opinion, the following methodological recommendations will help to solve this problem:

• 1)    Priority of the content of the work (especially at the initial stage);

• 2)    The possibility of final processing of written material statements (the variant with errors is considered as a draft version);

• 3)    Involvement of students in the discussion and evaluation of written works (students act as producers of knowledge);

• 4)    Correction of gross errors (distorting the meaning of the statement).

The final stage of training involves evaluating the effectiveness of the didactic process and adjusting the training strategies. At this stage, the teacher is faced with the problem of forming students ' motivation to learn the language. The teacher is faced with a certain dilemma: on the one hand, it is necessary to objectively assess the success of the language training of students, pointing out the aspects that require additional attention; and on the other hand, it is important to motivate students for further training. Work on learning English the dilemma can be resolved if a good psychological microclimate is established in the group and students are involved in determining strategies for further language learning.

Proficiency in English is an integral part of the professional culture of a modern specialist. As the practice of teaching English in higher education shows, students of non-philological specialties face certain problems in the process of learning English. The article contains a number of methodological recommendations, which, according to the author, are of the author, will contribute to the solution of the above problems. Of course, the material of the article does not exhaust all aspects of the problem under consideration. We see the prospects for further scientific research in this direction in the development of the content of the educational and methodological complex for teaching English to students of non-philological specialties of higher educational institutions.