Teaching students foreign language writings skills based on cooperative learning

Abstract

Informatization of language education as well as the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to development of new innovative methods of teaching foreign languages based on blended learning which means that particular stages of developing speech skills or foreign language aspects are executed individually or in groups in a classroom whereas some other stages are extracurricular and are executed with use of modern ICT. At the same time, during the development and implementation of the project method use of pedagogical technology 'cooperative learning' is crucial, as it fosters didactic conditions for better learning content acquisition. Alongside with that, experience of introducing this pedagogical technology in teaching a foreign language indicates particular problem areas which reduce effectiveness of foreign language teaching based on blended learning. The purpose of this paper is to describe methodology of teaching students foreign language writing skills based on the pedagogical technology 'cooperative learning' using blended learning which combines individual and group work in the classroom or remotely with the use of online services. The paper begins with the definition of the problem areas of the pedagogical technology "cooperative learning" which include: a) difficulties in organizing students' workplace;b) unwillingness of students to be divided by the teacher into educational subgroups;c) destructive behavior of students within a group;d) inability of students to resolve conflict situations;e) inability of students to adequately assess their participation in cooperative learning. The list of problem areas should be taken into account when developing stages of teaching and implementing the methodology of blended learning in language education. Next, the authors specify and summarize the content of teaching foreign language writing to students of a language university, depending on the stage of study (bachelor's degree-master's degree-postgraduate study). The methodology of blended learning of students' written speech based on the implementation of the pedagogical technology "cooperative learning" includes four stages and a number of steps: 1) informational and organizational stage ( students' introduction into the basics of project activities and the technology of 'cooperative learning';distribution of students into subgroups, discussion of the project timeframe, stages of project implementation, criteria for evaluating the results of the project and the participation of each student in project activities);2) technological stage (students' introduction into the online service chosen for the web-based project;discussion of cyber security issues when working in the Internet);3) Procedural (individual and cooperative students' work aimed at creating collaboratively written texts using the wiki service online and offline);4) final stage (presentation of student projects, evaluation of projects and teacher's activities, reflection). The paper describes in detail the content of each of stages of teaching. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology is proved by the experimental training. The paper provides a detailed description of the preparation, conduct and results of the experimental training.