Innovative experience of mentoring would-be linguists for a graduation project: from research to experiment

According to the requirements of higher education standards the State Final Examination (SFE) should demonstrate the graduates' development of competences declared in the educational program. In the Institute of Foreign Languages within Moscow City Pedagogic University, a scientific project was carried out to bring into accordance the goal and the tasks of the educational program together with the complex of procedures assessing international professional competence of a graduate in "Linguistics" field of education, specialization "Theory and practice of intercultural communication". The research part of the project consisted of three stages. At the first stage, using context analysis method, generalised descriptors were singled out from the competence model of the specialist in intercultural communication, which make it possible to more clearly structure the planned results of education at three levels, i.e. cognitive, pragmatic and affective. Such description of the required result of education was necessary to find clear guidelines for selecting the content of control activities. At the second stage, the types of activities were described that allow to form the planned results. At the third stage, to further improve the educational process, the components of the competence, that are poorly presented in control procedures, were specified, and a contradiction has been formulated to put forward a hypothesis about the format and content of the state examination. The contradiction lied in the fact that the SFE in its traditional form did not expose the advisory-communicative activity of the future specialist in intercultural communication. The required by the standard presence of employers at the State Final Examination often failed its function. The employers did not have an opportunity to evaluate the readiness of the graduate for real activity in the sphere of intercultural communication. As a hypothesis, the statement was accepted that the form of final state examination could be the defence of final project work by the student. The problem of the content and form of the student project was solved on the basis of two key ideas. The first one was that the project in its form should present a complete product aimed at a potential consumer or an employer. The second idea was that the content of the project should be not only intended for the consumer but also include the part of the educational program that is most focused on forming specific professional skills in students. This discipline is the course "The French Language in the Sphere of Tourism" that trains students for the professional diploma of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Paris. In accordance with these initial positions, the content of the graduation project was defined as "The National Identity of the French: Linguo-Cultural Aspect". The students were proposed the themes for projects. The stages of project work were identified in the schedule with the timing of consultations and meetings for professors and students. A list of compulsory elements of the graduation project was developed in the form of a portfolio with an indication of the necessary volume of each element. The experiment has confirmed the productivity of the accepted hypothesis. The students have created projects with a potential of practical usage in mass media, in the work of travel agents, guides, managers of cultural centres. The created products have received an authentic assessment of potential employers; the students have conducted the reflection on the effectiveness of the applied strategies and the level of their own competence. The graduates have seen an opportunity to realize their projects in the job market at the example of sphere of service and tourism. This has increased their interest in expanding their linguistic knowledge and skills, created the necessity to look for new forms of language usage in terms of the requirements of the modern labour market. The experiment has also shown that with the help of a well-designed system of assessment materials final examination of the graduates can control the presence of great variety of intercultural competence components both in pragmatic and cognitive aspects.

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