Modular English language training for would-be technical experts

A number of national high technical schools have joined an international scientific and educational communityand in addition started to extend collaboration with a majority of higher educational institutions, organizations and companiesabroad. On the way to globalisation and integration many of the national universities have encountered a problem of an inefficient levelof foreign language competence mastering by the university graduates. In this connection, high technical schools required new standardsof training would-be specialists capable of functioning in the international scientific and academic environment and possessing at leastone foreign language. The achievement of the above mentioned goals can be possible due to implementation of a modular educationaltechnology in the university academic process. This technology makes it possible for any student to follow an individual academic curriculum,which includes a target-oriented program, information bank and teaching guide. Thus, modular training is considered to be aparticular didactic system, which is realized through a total of different forms of teacher-student partnership organized in a number ofacademic units (modules) with the purpose to raise the efficiency of teaching material coverage by students and in addition to improvethe quality of foreign languages training. The modular foreign languages training program was designed and launched in the academicprocess of Tomsk Polytechnic University in 2005. The program is intended for would-be technical experts studying a foreign languageon a profound basis. One of the main conditions of modular training program successful implementation in an academic process is undoubtedlya modular foreign languages syllabus. To design a modular foreign languages syllabus is a time-consuming activity bearingsevere requirements to educational designers' pedagogical and methodological competences. It was designed in accordance with themethodological principles of modular training such as modularity, structural division of teaching content into separate modular units,dynamism, activity method, flexibility, method of conscious perspective, versatility of methodical counselling and parity.

Keywords

Authors

References