The importance of improving listening skills at non-linguistic faculties of universities

Socio-political and economic changes in the life of society have led to significant changes in the education system. In this regard, the status of a foreign language as a university discipline has grown significantly. A foreign language is becoming an important tool for developing the intellectual abilities of young people, improving their educational potential. In this case, the goal of teaching a foreign language at a university today becomes, first of all, the mastery by students of the ability to carry out direct contacts with native speakers of the target language in the most common situations of everyday and business communication. However, communication is not just speaking a foreign language, it is also the perception of the interlocutor’s speech by ear. In this regard, speaking and listening can be called the main types of speech activity in communication with native speakers of foreign languages.

Based on this, it is possible to assume that the problem of teaching listening at various stages of teaching a foreign language is relevant and requires its detailed research. It should be noted that listening as a method of teaching a foreign language at non-linguistic faculties of universities began to be studied in the methodological literature relatively recently. However, in the practical aspect of teaching a foreign language, listening is present as a goal and as a means of learning, determined by the general objectives of the course and stage of learning.

Thus, at the initial stage, the main task is, for example, the formation of basic listening skills. However, the main task of listening is to teach the student an adequate understanding of speech. Being a learning tool in the educational process, listening, in addition to its main role (communication), performs an important pedagogical function. Therefore, it provides some control over the learning process; stimulates the speech activity of students; is used to familiarize them with a new language, speech and regional material acts as a means of developing skills in all types of speech activity; contributes to the maintenance of the achieved level of mastery of the word and (which is very important) increases the effectiveness of feedback and self-control.

Based on the relevance of the problem of using listening as a method of teaching a foreign language, we can note the need to take into account the following features of listening: direct oral communication; an important part of mental activity. In terms of its role in the communication process, it is a reactive type of speech activity; increases attention, recognition and comparison of language resources, sums up what he heard, forming a judgment. Reproduces the opinions of other people and forms an adequate response to them.

The most important criteria for the quality of language education today are: a) the relevance of language training, which is in demand in the labor market; b) education, as such, not only meeting the requirements of the modern economy, but always going forward; c) the quality of teaching a foreign language, which implies not only the volume and level of knowledge, but also the ability to speak a foreign language and use language competence in practice; e) the level of knowledge of a foreign language that meets international standards for the quality of education; f) the availability of innovative educational programs.

In this regard, the importance of studying this problem lies in the fact that the goals of teaching a foreign language can be selective (for example, mastering the skills and abilities of oral speech or reading scientific and technical literature) and complex (the ability to perceive speech by ear, speak, read, write in foreign language). Thus, in the process of teaching a foreign language teacher, attention should be paid to the formation of students' technological skills that facilitate language acquisition.

In order to make the listening process more productive, it is necessary, as practice shows, to master the specifics of the training content. At the same time, it is believed that speech skills should be the basis of the content of language education. Consequently, the method of teaching listening should be included in teaching as a means of mastering other types of speech activity. Therefore, we must apply special and non-special speech exercises to achieve the desired results in teaching listening, as well as various language exercises (including preliminary ones). All this will allow to fully cordon off the advantages of teaching listening to freshmen of non-linguistic universities.

Since the listening process includes memorizing texts by ear (this develops memory), the use of word combinations (develops attention), then listening as a method of teaching a foreign language associated with the ability to listen, understand and attract the attention of the interlocutor can be attributed to developmental learning. The importance of studying the problem is that listening is a very difficult type of speech activity, therefore, it must take the appropriate place in the educational process of the university. In addition, listening proficiency allows for educational and developmental goals. Accordingly, the methodology of teaching a foreign language, according to the general requirements of higher education, includes listening as a necessary part of the language training of students.

The problem of improving the mechanisms for listening at non-linguistic faculties of universities is associated with the following provisions: 1) When choosing a text for teaching listening, a teacher should take into account the content (relevance to the topic, accessibility, the factor of education, etc.); linguistic form (its availability, familiar linguistic phenomena being studied at the moment); its communicative function; 2) a clear distinction between segments of the speech chain (for interpreting the message), which the inexperienced listener perceives as a continuous stream; the ability to highlight individual lexical and grammatical units in the text: phrases, syntagmas, word combinations, words and understanding the meaning of each of them; 3) facilitating the process of understanding (gives the effect of equivalent replacement by converting verbal information into figurative information); 4) the inclusion of the internal mechanism of pronunciation (the student transforms sound images articulatory in order to master the skills of pronunciation in external speech); 5) improving the memory mechanism (the ability to keep in mind the key words of a phrase for the time it takes the listener to comprehend the entire phrase, sentence or paragraph); 6) development of a probabilistic forecasting mechanism (development of the skill to predict the end of a phrase or sentence based on their beginning).

Thus, listening should take an important place at any stage of study at a university. This allows students to learn to listen carefully to the speech that is spoken; lays down the ability to anticipate the semantic content of an utterance and thus foster a culture of listening not only in a foreign language, but also in a native language; forms the ability to understand foreign speech by ear. It also has an educational effect on a young person. It has a positive effect on the development of his memory, and, above all, auditory memory, which is important not only for learning a foreign language, but also for studying other subjects.

Thus, after examining the listening process, the specifics and methods of teaching one of the most difficult and most important types of speech activity, ways to overcome the difficulties that students face at different stages of learning, it was found that listening is an independent type of speech activity, which is more difficult than speaking, reading and writing. Listening makes a significant contribution to achieving educational goals by providing students with the ability to understand a statement in a foreign language. Thus, listening is a powerful tool for teaching a foreign language; it makes it possible to adapt to the sound side of the language being studied, its phonemic structure and intonation (rhythm, stress, melody).