Foreign language for specific purposes textbook as a means of fostering innovative linguistic personality of students

The article is devoted to the problem of developing and evaluating the modern ESP textbook as a means of fostering innovative linguistic personality of students. The objectives, models, principles, and methods of professional focused teaching foreign languages at the higher school with regard to competences and traits of the linguistic personality of a specialist that allow to participate effectively in the innovative processes and intercultural dialogue are explored. It is emphasized that the high level of proficiency in the foreign language of profession in its every functional aspect (communicative, cognitive, culturological) is a necessary condition of the specialist's innovative activity by itself, international cooperation in education, science, economy and other spheres of life. The authors made an attempt to investigate the content of the concept "Foreign Language for Specific Purposes" by the example of the ESP phenomenon (English for Specific Purposes), to determine its absolute and variable characteristics, the main goals and target audience, the specificity of the methodology and conditions for successful ESP learning, parameters and criteria for evaluating the relevant textbooks. The effective professional focused coursebook, in the authors' opinion, should adequately model the teaching and educational process at the higher school, and in its content should correlate with the dynamics of the linguodidactic structure of the innovative linguistic personality of the specialist, which includes three levels: verbal semantic; lingvocognitive; motivation-pragmatic. The language competences and personality traits of students as bearers of innovative culture (creativity, critical thinking, reflexivity, assertiveness, responsibility, tolerance, self-actualization) are evolved by means of appropriate pedagogical technologies and methods. At the initial (propaedeutic) stage the teaching methods offered in foreign language textbooks for specific purposes are based on the traditional system of professional focused teaching foreign languages, and the principles and methods of the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) widely used in the European science and practice are applied at the advanced stage. This conclusion is confirmed by the results of some ESP textbooks analysis presented in the article and the experience of creating the textbook "English for Lawyers" (the level of academic bachelor's degree), which is successfully used in teaching students at the Ural State Law University and other Russian universities. The authors' conception of this textbook is based on the current synergetic model of educational space development that has been actively developed recently and combines main methodological approaches in teaching foreign language discourse at higher schools, including professional focused teaching and the Content and Language Integrated Learning. This synergetic model adequately reflects linguistic, psychological and pedagogical aspects of foreign language for specific purposes course design - communicative ontology of the language, its epistemology, methodology of foreign language teaching, - that allows to explore effectively the interaction of many factors in the educational process in order to achieve the maximum pedagogical effect [1]. The content and structure of the textbook is affected by a limited number of academic hours in the bachelor's programme. Therefore, the structure of the textbook content may be roughly divided into two unequal parts corresponding to two stages of language training: the initial (propaedeutic) stage with its specific methodology of the introductory course in traditional professional focused foreign language teaching and the advanced stage, where ideas and methods of the Content and Language Integrated Learning dominate. Other fundamental provisions of our textbook methodological conception built upon the research results are the dialogue of cultures as philosophy of modern foreign language education; the fostering of students' innovative linguistic personality on the basis of linguodidactic models developed by domestic linguistic scientists and methodologists; the use of innovative interactive pedagogical technologies including electronic educational resources; selection of special authentic texts, assignments and exercises based on the specificity of legal discourse. The methodology of the research is based on theoretical (analysis, synthesis, comparison and evaluation) methods. It is concluded that while designing and evaluating foreign language textbooks for professional purposes one should take into consideration the specific pedagogical approach and / or the methodological conception of teaching foreign language of profession, the future speciality of students, their professional motivation, level of foreign language proficiency, stages of learning, current needs of students and society, as well as linguodidactic models of the linguistic personality developed by the domestic scientists.

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