Nurutdinova A.R.
Associate Professor in Comparative Education, Ph.D
Department of Foreign Languages for Professional Communication
Kazan National Research Technological University
Kazan, Russia
THE NEW DEVELOPMENT IN THE FOREIGN LANGUAGES TRAINING (FLT) SYSTEM FOR YOUNG LEARNERS IN THE RUSSIAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM (retrospective analyses)
Abstract
The article will dwell upon the issue of training teachers of foreign languages for young learners in Russia. It will describe the system of training with the reference to how it emerged, and it will summarize the current discussions of the issues related to the professional competences of the teacher that are of relevance due to the introduction of new Standard of Higher Professional Education. The article will offer suggestions for the competences of the teachers of foreign languages for young learners and relating modules. The suggestions are open for discussions for reaching a joint approach.
Key words: Education, foreign languages, and teacher training universities, pedagogical universities, philology, communication, method, skill and science.
Introduction
After a very long period of stability, the system of higher education in Russia has been going through a series of serious modifications. As any modifications, they have been motivated by the strife for improvement, although the most recent changes started by the Bologna process are not considered by everyone as improvements, moreover, they are regarded by many as an attempt to ruin the remnants of the former system of education. A survey of the transformations of the system of training teachers of foreign languages will set an example of the modifications, which the whole system of higher education in Russia is going through, and reveal the main issues of concern in the search of improvements.
- The Traditional System of Training Teachers in Russia
Teachers of foreign languages were traditionally trained in Russia at Pedagogical Institutes, at Faculties of Modern Languages. The training took 5 years, and the students learnt 2 modern languages, with a profound study of Linguistics and with courses in Psychology, Pedagogy, and Methods of Teaching. The graduates were awarded not a degree, but the so-called “specialty” in foreign languages and a qualification of a teacher of two foreign languages (for example, English and German) at a secondary school level. They were not qualified for teaching in primary schools and kindergartens, as they were not trained in this field, and there was no need in it, as at schools foreign languages programs started at grade 5 (and later at grade 4), when children were 10 years of age. There were, though, very few and very prestigious schools, the so-called schools specializing in English, where training in English started at primary school level.
It should be admitted, though, that in the 1960s there was a trend to start teaching foreign languages to preschoolers, and there appeared even TV programs with English classes, textbooks for children were published and syllabi for teaching suggested. But gradually this trend vanished. This seems to be natural, given that in the Soviet Union, isolated from the outside world, there was practically no communication with other nations, or if it existed, it was too limited. In fact, in the 1970s and early 1980s it was a hard task to motivate people to learn foreign languages at all.
And it was also quite natural that the political and social changes of the late 1980s influenced tremendously motivation for learning languages, it was the time that training teachers of English for preschoolers and for primary school students started. It was done to meet the demand of parents who became aware of the fact that the future success of their children with the opportunities granted by freedom will be impossible without proficiency in foreign languages.
- The Current System of Training Teachers of Foreign Languages for Young Learners
The training of teachers for young learners, when it just started, was based on the 5-year curriculum, which combined courses in English and Children’s Psychology and Pedagogy.
With the adoption of Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programs, in the late 1990s, the curricula changed, and a 4-year Bachelor degree program was introduced. The courses offered might be described through modules, which are Foreign Language, Linguistics, and Methods of Teaching Children.
The Linguistics module includes courses in General Linguistics, History of the Foreign Language, Theory of Phonetics, Theory of Grammar, Lexicology, and Stylistics. The courses in the Foreign Language include besides the 4 language skills, the so-called “Country studies” incorporating Geography, history, literature, children’s literature, culture of the country where the language is spoken. Methodology includes general Methodology of teaching foreign languages, i.e. irrespectively of the age of learners, and Methods of teaching children and field experience and student teaching. There is one very special course called Children’ Country Study aiming to make students acquainted not just with the country and the culture related to the language they study, but also with the life of its children: what games they play, what books they read, their interests and values.
After getting Bachelor degrees, the graduates can start working, but in fact they are not supposed to. They are supposed to continue their education, and two options are offered for them. One option is to pursue a master degree course. This is a 2-year program with 14 hours of face-to-face sessions per week. The students are supposed to write a dissertation of up to 75 pages which is a serious research of issues related either with teaching young learners or with training pre- service teachers of foreign languages. The courses they are offered focus on higher education, cross-cultural communication, intensive methods of teaching languages, research methods. They also can take a special 1- year course qualifying them as university lecturers.
Another opportunity offered to bachelor’s degree holders is a one-year course leading to the qualifications either for teaching in vocational teachers’ training colleges, or in primary schools. This program mainly involves student teaching and writing a graduation paper of up to 50 pages.
The system described has been established in the late 1990s. After a decade since it has been introduced it is possible to claim that the students who took it are really well trained for teaching children: they know what is very relevant for teaching children, they are aware of the child’s cognitive and physiological development, of psycho- linguistic peculiarities of language acquisition, that is, they know how to teach foreign languages to children and they really do it efficiently.
But although the program is fairly new, now it faces changes due to several factors. One of them seems to be entailing modifications in European higher education in general, as this factor is the Bologna process aiming at harmonizing various educational systems of training. The second factor also results from the Bologna process that launched attempts to search for competences of university graduates. As a result, a new concept of higher education is being developed in Russia and it is assumed that the new programs based on this concept will be offered since 2009.
- In Search for Competences of a Foreign Language Teacher
The main idea of the new concept of training teachers is based on the competence approach, implementing this approach entails a new procedure of designing curricula: from identifying professional competences of the in-service teacher to identifying the courses that would allow the pre-service teachers acquire those competences. As a result there is expected congruence between the competences to be gained and the training. This procedure seems to be quite reasonable, and that is exactly the way it should be: if this congruence does not exist, it is not clear what the universities are for. At the same time it should be admitted that most of current Russian programs are rather knowledge oriented than competence oriented. This knowledge orientation is quite obvious if tests and exams are taken into consideration, as they usually are targeted at finding out what the student knows and what he/she does not know which is the main criterion of the academic success, but which does not allow to assess the prospective performance of the graduate. The competence based approach is targeted at training for professional competences, for the ability to perform the duties of the teacher, in this respect the approach is focused on the abilities rather than knowledge, and this implies that all the aspects of training teachers should be reconsidered: its goals, content, curricula, syllabi, etc.
The concept of professional competencies has been widely discussed and developed by educators and several suggestions have been made. But, although the main idea seems to be new, something of the kind existed in the former days. Professional requirements for teachers of foreign languages published in 1985 identified not only the skills of in-service teachers of foreign languages, but also set the goals of pre-service training. These requirements were based on the functional approach to the professional activities of the teacher, i.e. content of training pre-service teachers was determined by the content, the sphere, and the conditions of the activities of in-service teachers.
According to S. Shatilov and K. Salomatov, the goal of training teachers was to develop the following competences:
− language (linguistic) competence regarded as the knowledge of the system of the foreign language and the rules of using it in communication;
− linguistic-cultural competence regarded as the awareness of interrelationship language and culture of the countries speaking the foreign language, the acquisition of cultural semantics, and the cultural function of the foreign language;
− communicative competence regarded as the ability to produce and understand utterances in the foreign language adequate to the conditions and factors of communication, as the adequate proficiency in the foreign language, which for the teacher is a means of communication, of teaching, and of self-education. S. Shatilov and K. Salomatov described the professional objective of the course of training of pre-service teachers as developing communicative-methodological competence which consists of professional-adaptive skills, gnostic skills (the ability to compare and analyze language units, monologues, dialogues, etc.), constructive skills (the ability to adapt texts for teaching various language skills, etc.), organizing skills.
During the recent period of transformations and search for competences, these requirements haven’t been completely discarded, have been analyzed, re-estimated, developed by various scholars, they are usually referred to in the major publications, though mostly by those scholars who write on the competences of foreign language teachers, while they are practically never mentioned by those who develop the general concept of higher education. This general concept has been widely discussed, various proposals have been made suggesting different names for competences, different definitions of competences, allocating different relevance to certain competences, but it seems that there is no contradiction to trace. Let us examine some of the proposals. In 2003 the project of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation titled “Development of recommendations and instructional materials for training specialists in the field of education for the strategic goals of school renewal” described the professional competence of the teacher as an integral ability to solve typical professional problems arising in real situations of professional pedagogical activities, this ability is based on knowledge, professional and life experiences, values, inclinations.
In most publications professional competence is regarded as an integral indicator of quality of university education and is described as the ability to solve typical professional problems. Professional pedagogical competence is usually described as consisting of two basic components: competence in teaching certain subjects, and competence in developing and upbringing students, the second component being regarded as an invariable component of educators’ competence regardless of the subject they teach.
The Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation has recently suggested a new model of the Federal Standard of Higher Education. The framework of this model is also based on two components, the former is described as universal, and the latter is a variable one. Thus, according to the suggested model, a university graduate should have the following competences:
- a) Universal competences including, for example, competences in science, such as the ability to apply the knowledge of the basic laws of natural sciences in the professional activities, to apply mathematical analysis methods and models, theoretical and experimental research in physics, chemistry, ecology; the ability to identify the essence of natural sciences in the problems arising in the professional activities and to employ the required tools and instrument of physics and mathematics for solving the problems; instrumental competences, such as the computer skills, the ability to use the state language in written and oral communication, as well as proficiency in a foreign language; the ability to manage small teams; the ability to work with information coming from various sources; social and cultural competences resulting from learning humanities, economics, for example; the ability to organize communities of learners, the ability to cooperate with social partners.
- b) Professional competences related to the field of qualification. The two approaches to the issue of professional pedagogical competences described above demonstrate that they do not contradict each other. On the other hand, the variety of the uncontradictory classifications is fairly confusing. While Russian educators are making attempts to come to agreement with each other in terms of these classifications, it might be more helpful to work with European educators and develop a joint approach, as the Bologna process will in any way unite the efforts made at national levels and as a result most of the concepts proposed now will have to be reconsidered. But in any case, the above deliberations touched upon the issue of general understanding of professional pedagogical competences without going into details of competences of teachers of foreign languages.
- Solovova, V. Safonova, and K. Makhmurian, the authors of the publication of “Attestation of foreign language teachers of educational establishments” identify 3 main competences of the foreign language teacher: communicative, general pedagogical competence (psycho-pedagogical and methodological), and cultural and philological. They interpret the communicative competence in the conventional way, as the ability to communicate in a foreign language. Psycho-pedagogical competence is described as a wide scope of knowledge in the field of psychology and pedagogy and the ability to apply this knowledge in designing lesson plans and in teaching as well as in various extracurricular activities and in communicating with students and their parents and with colleagues.
The cultural competence is understood as the general level of culture and education, and the philological competence implies a high level of proficiency in the native language. Another aspect of philological competence is related to the foreign language proficiency, that is why, as Kolesnikova and Tamashevich suggest, it should be regarded as a part of communicative competence. Methodological competence is described as the ability to teach a foreign language in accordance with the goals and conditions of instruction as well as with the age, the level of language proficiency, and individual needs of students.
This interpretation of competences of the foreign language teacher on the one hand is in line with the current views on competences in Russian education, on the other hand, it does not contradict the above mentioned views of Shatilov and Salomatin expressed in 1985 which still remain the most cited in the deliberations of scholars designing the set of competences of the foreign languages teachers.
- Competences of Teachers of the Foreign Languages for Young Learners
Below is given an attempt of specifying the competencies of a teacher of foreign languages specializing in teaching young learners:
- Communicative competence in the foreign language (professional communicative proficiency involving besides the general foreign language proficiency the ability to communicate with young learners in a comprehensible way which implies adapting the utterances and texts appropriately to the cognitive development of learners)
- Linguistic competence (the ability to apply in teaching the knowledge of the system of the language taught, the ability to compare the native and the foreign language and thus to predict the common mistakes the learners will tend to make based on the interference of the native language)
- Linguistic-cultural competence (the awareness of the relationship between language and culture, the knowledge about the culture of the country where the foreign language is spoken, its history, everyday life of its people, traditions, customs, values, attitudes, popular books, films, cartoons, games, songs, interests of the children, etc. and the ability to apply this knowledge in teaching children)
- Didactic competence (the knowledge of psychological, physiological, mental, cognitive development of young learners, the awareness of native and foreign language acquisition processes inherent to the age of the learners, the wide knowledge of various approaches, techniques of teaching foreign languages to young learners and the ability to apply this knowledge in designing, analyzing and critical evaluating the instruction and its outcomes)
The curriculum for developing these competences should include, besides general education courses training for universal competences, the following modules:
- Foreign language and culture
- Linguistics Methodology of teaching foreign languages
- Children Psychology and Pedagogy
Summarizing the current trends in Russian pedagogy, the suggested competences are open for discussions for reaching a joint approach in the framework of Bologna process.
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