Teaching writing in English is one of the principal tasks of English training of students in linguistic higher educational institutions, i.e. of training future teachers of English, translators, and applied linguists. This is due to the fact that written speech is more and more taking the position of the leading form of international communication in English as the global/planetary language of such communication, especially if that communication is professional, and, in particular, the academic one. For students of linguistic higher educational institutions, the main constituent of their English writing training is teaching them English academic writing (i.e. writing academic essays) because gaining command of just such writing skills serves as the basic means of mastering the skills of writing in English the most sophisticated types of written papers, such as professional articles, theses, presentation texts, etc. This kind of teaching only now begins to be researched in Ukrainian methodology of foreign language instruction, while using the project-computer methodology for that has not been researched at all as yet. This was the stimulus for choosing the above-mentioned issue as the subject matter of consideration in this article. It analyzes the project-computer technology developed by the authors and consisting of 12 stages of forming students’ academic essay writing skills in three selected subgenres of such essays (“personal opinion,” “for and against,” “problems and solutions”). All these stages are divided into the stages of off-line (purely project stages) and stages of blended off-line – on-line and purely on-line learning activities (project-computer stages). The characteristics of every stage are discussed and the model of the teaching/learning process in the conditions of using project-computer technology is suggested. The information concerning the practical efficiency of this technology is given. The conclusion is made about the rationality of introducing such a technology into courses of English at both linguistic and non-linguistic higher schools. Keywords: linguistic higher educational institution, academic writing in English, project-computer technology, stages of developing academic writing skills.
Project-computer technology in teaching english academic writing to students of linguistic higher educational institutions
