Social demand of society as a factor of specifying the goals of foreign language teaching in technical university

Abstract

The structure of the article is determined by the logic of designing the goals of foreign language teaching in a technical university. The highest level of generality of goals reflects the social demand of society as a whole and is presented in the Federal State Educational Standard of Higher Education. At the second level of goal formulation (Model Discipline Programs), they are specified according to the needs of the spheres of economics. In the development of Work Programs of Discipline within the framework of teaching in a specific university, final clarification of goals is required depending on the requirements of regional employers (the third level of specification of goals). In order to clarify the objectives of teaching foreign language to students of technical universities taking into account the requirements of the regional labour market, a questionnaire was conducted in 2019 for graduates of the National Research University „Moscow Institute of Electronic Technology,” working in a specialty in enterprises in the field of exact technologies in Zelenohrad (Moscow). The questionnaire showed that in addition to the four types of speech activities specified in the Model Programs on Foreign Language for Non-Language Universities, engineers use interpretation and translation in their professional activities. The rating of types of foreign language speech activity in descending order of their importance for professional activity of the engineer is as follows: reading – auditing – translation – writing – speaking. The most demanded professional foreign-language tasks in all types of speech activities (except translation) are solved by modern engineers in communicative situations using information technologies.