CC BY
11PEDAGOGICAL SCIENCES
ON OVERCOMING THE DIFFICULTIES OF STUDENTS' PERCEPTION OF ENGINEERING
ECOLOGY LECTURES IN ENGLISH
Gerasimova L.,
Candidate of biological sciences, Docent of the Department of life safety, Reshetnev Siberian State University of Science and Technology Kuklina A.
Senior lecturer of the Department of Foreign Languages for Technical Specialties, Reshetnev Siberian State
University of Science and Technology
Abstract
The paper presents some methodological techniques of preparing students to perception of lectures in engineering ecology in English. The effectiveness of a lecture as one of the best teaching methods is described. The most typical problems of the process of preparing an effective lecture are considered. The ways of solving these problems are presented. Conclusions of the effectiveness of these techniques are made. The techniques can be widely applied when teaching students to perceive lectures in their specialty in English.
Keywords: scientific linguistic cliché, language tools, emotionally-expressive language means, sublanguage, semantic relations.
The objectives of teaching a specialty language may be different depending on the method of communication, but the very problem of studying a foreign language by specialists of various branches of knowledge in order to contact and exchange information has become very important recently. Since a specialist in any field of knowledge is more and more often required to exchange information with foreign partners, the ultimate goal of the language training of graduates of higher educational institutions is to prepare them to give lectures in their specialty, to communicate with a foreign audience, to participate in scientific conferences, disputes, conversations with specialists from similar fields of knowledge. The solution to this problem becomes possible thanks to the opportunity provided to students to receive appropriate language training for work in a specialty: to attend a course of lectures in a specialty in a foreign language, to participate in a seminar, practical lesson, discussion, debate. Accordingly, high demands are placed on the teachers providing a successful solution to this problem. They should not only be fluent in a foreign language and be highly qualified specialists in their field, but also, in the course of preparation for classes and lectures, must solve a number of problems that their colleagues did not have to solve before.
Lectures are probably the best teaching method in many circumstances and for many students; especially for communicating conceptual knowledge, and where there is a significant knowledge gap between lecturer and audience. However, the importance of lectures has recently been under-estimated and there are many who advocate their replacement with written communications or electronic media. But we suppose lectures are effective because they exploit the spontaneous human aptitude for spoken (rather than written) communications and because they are real-time, human-presence social events (rather than electronic media). Literacy is a recently cultural artefact and for most of their evolutionary history people spontaneously communicated in-
formation by speech. By contrast with speech, all communication technologies - whether reading a book or a computer monitor - are artificial and unnatural. This is probably why many people find it easier to learn from lectures than from media; and why excessive or inappropriate use of visual aids can so easily detract from the educational experience. The second reason for lectures' effectiveness is that they are formally-structured social events which artificially manipulate human psychology. A formal lecture is a mutually-beneficial 'collusion' between class and a lecturer. Lectures are delivered by an actually-present individual, and this creates a here-and-now social situation which makes lectures easier to attend to. The formal structure of a lecture therefore artificially focuses attention and generates authority for the lecturer to make their communications more memorable. Furthermore, to allow the potential for repeated interactions to allow trust to develop between lecturer and class, it is much more educationally-effective for lectures to be given as a course rather than as one-off interactions.
The main difficulty in preparing lectures in English is that, when compiling lecture notes, the teacher generally focuses on the written form of speech, which is characterized by more thorough processing of language material than oral communication, as well as special selection of language tools used primarily in written communication. But the teacher should not forget that in presenting lecture material he or she often has to face the need to avoid "scientific linguistic clichés" and turn to the spoken language. This difficulty is especially felt in such specific forms of speech as a scientific debate, discussion, conference, and conversation in a specialty, where the use of an arsenal of colloquial language means will be required even more. Conversational speech is known to be emotional and that is why it resorts to special expressive means more often than any other form of speech. Therefore, the question arose about the study and skillful use of the system of emotionally-expressive means of the English language, which could add liveliness and expressiveness to the
delivered lecture material. The ability to formalize a statement on a scientific topic (whether it be a lecture, a report or defending one's position in a scientific discussion) requires compulsory knowledge of both the means of the general literary language and its colloquial style, as well as the terminology and the totality of the sublanguage means of a particular field of science. This is where two problems arise. On the one hand, the selection of expressive means of the spoken language mastered at the initial stage of training, and on the other hand, the development of an arsenal of expressive means inherent in the sublanguage of this specialty. The teachers of the departments of FLTS (foreign languages for technical specialties) and EE (ecological engineering) tried to solve this problem together by developing a certain concept when teaching the specialty language and developing teaching methods. This methodology will subsequently be the basis for the creation of a teaching tool for preparing students for the perception of lectures in the specialty in English. Thanks to a successful choice of language tools, a lecture or report does not turn into a set of learned and trained lexical and grammatical clichés of a scientific language, but into lively emotional speech, which increases the audience's interest in the information communicated. Taking into account the variety of forms of activity that graduates of a higher educational institution should be prepared for, it seems important not to miss this point in the general course of their preparation. This particular question of the methodology of teaching students the language of the specialty is related to the more general question of studying the expressive capabilities of language tools in English in general. The solution of this problem should naturally take place in terms of practical orientation. The main things in this case are: to help students to correctly study a special scientific text, to see in it the whole variety of expert language tools, to understand the purpose for which they are used by the author so that in subsequent work in the specialty, applying this knowledge, be able to correctly select from the synonymous means in the language those lexical and grammatical means that would best convey the author's thought in the lecture, in the report, in the conversation, in the discussion on the specialty.
For what purposes can expressive language means be used specifically, for example, in a lecture presentation of material?
1. To emphasizing (different types of emphasizing):
a) the quality or properties, characteristics of the object of study;
b) the unusual, original formulation of the investigated problem;
c) the importance of any logical conclusion;
d) the result of comparing opposing research methods.
2. To emphasize certain reported facts or research results.
3. To enhance the value or importance of one particular fact or a single fact in the chain of many reported ones.
4. To refute or question some scientific statements.
5. To convey the author's subjective (negative, positive, neutral), and sometimes ironic attitude, to show the invalidity of a statement.
This list could be continued. The most diverse expressive means of the language could be used to express such semantic relations. In this aspect, in our opinion, the following issues are especially important: the study of synonyms and their shades, intensifiers (adjectives and adverbs), distinguishing constructions of various types, syntactic figures (repetitions, syntactic parallelism, gradation, rhetorical question) and, finally, stylistic tropes enriching the scientific language. In addition, the study of colloquial vocabulary in a scientific language, which is not an organically inherent element of it, but is used quite often in connection with a polemic or argument, always more or less emotionally colored, deserves special attention. To illustrate all above mentioned, obviously, it is necessary to offer some methodological recommendations for working with students in terms of familiarizing them with the emotionally-expressive system of English language tools. We consider it possible to emphasize the following:
1. The work should begin with an analysis of the text (written form of speech). It is preferable to use the popular science genre of the text at the first stage of study, but you can recommend the original text in the specialty. The specialization of the text (physical, chemical, biological, etc.) in this case does not matter, since it does not interfere with its stylistic analysis, as we are talking about identifying expressive language tools belonging to the common English language, and, in particular, one of its functional styles: the scientific style of presentation, forming a certain system as a stylistic category. It is also clear that there is no special "physical" or "ecological" style of presentation, but there is a specificity of individual disciplines: the ratio of the logical and emotional principle, which manifests itself differently depending on the discipline; it does not violate, however, the unity of the scientific style in general, its general trends and patterns. At the first stage of training, the teacher offers for analysis some expressive phrases of the language that he or she notes in the text.
2. After a few lessons, a teacher should ensure that students themselves find in the text on a specialty and analyze expressive means, choosing the right and only true equivalent of translation into Russian.
3. In subsequent classes, students must independently use in speech (in conversation, lectures on a specialty, etc.) one or another effective means of the language, studied by them on the material of texts in their specialty.
Such work requires the ability to handle not only bilingual dictionaries, but also synonymous and ideographic ones, where students will be able to find the options they need when styling the text.
Here is an example:
The text proposed for analysis is an excerpt from an environmental journal:
NATURAL INDICATORS OF POLLUTION
Scientists dealing with the problem of pollution consider it very important that it should be exactly assessed. A large number of fairly sophisticated pollution
gauges have been devised to serve this purpose. In addition, it has recently been found that there are a number of natural gauges whose performance by far exceeds anything that has so far been made by man. They are plants as lichens and bryophytes which are exceptionally sensitive to certain components of air pollution. Ideally such «indicators» species should be widespread, easy to recognize, and between them show a wide range of sensitivity so that the rate of fall-off pollution could be easily assessed. The sensitivity of certain plants to pollution components may also be of value to individual persons contemplating the possibility of settling down in an area. It is known, for example, that lichens are exceptionally sensitive to sulphur dioxide content in the air. It follows that people suffering from a variety of respiratory diseases would do well to live in an area where lichens are abundant on the trees.
The teacher can highlight in the text the words and grammatical forms interesting from the point of view of their expressive plan. Suppose we pay attention to the expressive shade of the adverb "exceptionally". This requires the identification of a linguistic fact in this context: to determine what simple concept it means by comparing it with a word expressing the same concept in the simplest form, and to determine the difference between the fact being studied (i.e. the adverb "exceptionally") and its simplest synonym in terms of both logical and emotional point of view. Obviously, of all existing synonyms that convey the concept of "exceptionally," the word "unusually" would be the simplest and most neutral, but, of course, it would be a purely contextual synonym. In comparison with a neutral "unusually," one feels the expression of the adverb "exceptionally". When analyzing the word "sophisticated", it should be emphasized that the use of quality adjectives allows conveying various stylistic shades in the definition of quality. For example, a shade of intensity and novelty, as in this case, if we compare the word "sophisticated" with its most common synonym "complex" (in this context). This set of techniques will have to be repeated in the study of each new expressive fact.
In a similar way, various samples of texts of the scientific style of presentation can be subjected to stylistic analysis; depending on the presentation material and the purpose of the information, a variety of expressive means can be used, the number of which will be different depending on the field of science (physics, mathematics - less; biology, ecology - more). The prac-
tice of such work on a text in a specialty can help students to use the accumulated knowledge to study the features of the scientific style of presentation, including not only basic lexical and grammatical phenomena and terminology, but also emotionally expressive means of common English for the purpose of giving the lecture presentation, in addition to accuracy and clarity, special vibrancy and expression, which, of course, will contribute to its better perception by the audience.
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