Organisation of students' operated independent activity by means of webquest technology as a successful condition of the foreign language communicative competence formation

The article is devoted to consideration of the problem of foreign language education effectiveness improvement at a higher vocational institution and substantiation of the necessity of such methodological condition as controlled independent activity in the educational process. It elucidates the description of new educational technology for realization of valuable guidelines of the contemporary society. According to the educational programs of the new generation the main objective of the foreign language training at a higher professional school is aimed at training of a specialist who possesses such a level of foreign language communicative competence, which allows him/her to solve effectively professional problems in the corresponding sphere of activity. In the current article we undertake an attempt to reveal and prove one of the important conditions of successful educational activity to gain foreign language communicative competence by the students, that is the controlled independent educational activity, and the technique of its organization on the basis of webquest technology application. Having analyzed the specificity of the webquest technology (its structure, the components functions), we have revealed and described its didactic potential as a new means of IT usage in the educational process with the goal to create conditions for stimulating students' activity, their independence, critical thinking, their involvement in the authentic context of the professional work. This technology uses a number of pedagogical innovations which are based on the methodology of problem- and student-focused approaches. The students' active searching independent activity is organized on the basis of webquest by attracting the Internet resources and is provided at all levels of problem solving, from comprehensive studying the problem to finding out solutions and obtaining the final result. Another advantage of the technology is that the webquest allows achieving both the accent on students' independent activity and strict supervision of this activity due to the technology format. Working on the webquest, it is necessary to elaborate the plan and correctly specify the student's independent activity performance results, as well as the ways of management of this activity attracting authentic foreign language information. To solve the methodological task of webquest technology integration into the educational process we have elaborated an algorithm, which includes not only the standard stages and sequence of steps to provide students' maximum activity and develop their foreign language communicative competence, but also an important preparatory stage aimed at the teacher, guiding his/her activity to take into consideration the peculiarities of students' independent work with authentic Internet resources. The analysis results and our personal teaching experience of using webquest technology show that it is important to build the strategy of work with the webquest technology on the basis of methodological theory. It should be relevant to the educational objectives aimed at enhancing the students' successful independent activity and developing their self-control abilities in the cognitive process. Webquest is nowadays one of the most effective pedagogical means for development of the foreign language communicative competence of students. Its efficiency in the educational process is conditioned by the organizational and pedagogical support directed to the maximum realization of challenges, addressed by the teacher to the students on each stage of webquest.

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