Teaching Mathematics to First-year Foreign Students of Technical University

Abstract

The article presents the results of a research aimed at the investigation of the causes of the extremely low academic performance of the first-year foreign students of the Ukhta State Technical University in the discipline “Mathematics”. This category of students has educational and cognitive difficulties, which are manifested in mastering special mathematical terminology and learning the proposed theoretical and practical teaching material. The author has identified the main problems faced by most of foreign students such as a bad knowledge of Russian language and a low level of basic school training. With the help of a diagnostic method for self-evaluation developed by Ch. D. Spielberger and adapted by Yu. L. Khanin, there was determined the level of reactive and personal anxiety of each of the foreign students of the supervised group on mathematics class and outside of it.