ON SOME METHODS OF WORKING WITH GERMAN-LANGUAGE TEXTS WITHIN THE DISCIPLINE "FOREIGN LANGUAGE IN PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES" AT A NON-LINGUISTIC FACULTY

The relevance of the appeal to the problem of formation of professional and communicative competence of specialists is determined not only by State Educational Standards of the latest generation, but also by the cognitive needs and the interests of students. The article is focused on the importance of developing discourse competence as a part of profession-oriented communication of nonlinguistic faculty students in the process of studies of German. The leading strategy of training of future specialists becomes a competent approach. In order to achieve a certain level of ownership of discursive competence, it is necessary to teach students-masters to own and operate the vocabulary of the professional sphere, to form skills, including skills to understand, allocate, structure and apply lexical, grammatical resources of a foreign language, define text genres, predict.

Plurilingual discourse competence

We present a didactic model for the multidimensional analysis of discourse genres as situated practices, illustrated through the study of a transactional conversation in Spanish. This model represents a basis for developing and assessing the discourse competence of plurilingual adult language learners (Spanish-, Catalan-, French- or English-learning university students) acquiring a minimal competence to participate in academic events (lectures, seminars and workshops), as well as to cope with everyday needs in a foreign city. For proficiency in the use of language in context, students must be aware of the three dimensions which define a discourse genre: the sociocultural, the pragmatic and the textual, each entailing specific criteria and indicators of achievement. Special focus is placed on the sociocultural dimension because of its underlying importance for the teaching and learning of discourse genres. One factor especially relevant in this dimension is the community of practice to which the learners belong as autonomous social agents and in which they critically and consciously engage in learning activities.

Male and Female Students’ Discourse Competence at Kalamansig National High School

The study aimed to determine the relationship between the oral and written discourse competence of the male and female students of Kalamansig National High School. Specifically, it sought to determine the level of oral and written discourse competence of male and female students in terms of informative, persuasive, and argumentative speeches; to find out if there is significant difference between male and female students’ written and oral discourse competence level in the three parameters; and to find out if there is a significant difference between the oral and written discourse competence in general when classified according to gender. This study used the descriptive-correlation method. The researcher utilized the purposive sampling in determining the seventy (70) Grade 10 performing students of Kalamansig National High School as respondents of the study. The teacher-made communicative written and speaking tests were used as instruments to gauge the male and female student’s written and oral discourse competence. Based on the findings, it was concluded that both male and female students oral and written discourse competence are good. Both group of students need equal attention from the teachers to enhance their speaking and writing skills.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHERS' PRACTICES OF DEVELOPING DISCOURSE COMPETENCE THROUGH SPEAKING SKILLS FOR GRADE 10 STUDENTS: A CASE STUDY

Being one of the compulsory foreign languages in Vietnam and recently regarded as one of the requirements for higher education enlistment, English has received growing attention from Vietnam high school students (Nguyen, 2021). In Circular 32 (2018), the Vietnam Ministry of Education and Training [MOET] officially recognised communicative competence as the primary outcome of the English National Program of which Discourse Competence (DC) is a crucial component (MOET, 2018). Although the program aims to achieve the outcome with more emphasis on listening and speaking skills, Vietnamese high school students remain to struggle to form extended spoken discourse (Le, 2011). With the view to gaining insights into the actual state of cultivating DC through speaking skills in students, the study investigates four Grade 10 teachers with varied backgrounds and teaching styles in a private school awarded twice by the MOET for educational reforms and their attempts to integrate CLT in the English language teaching curriculum. After conducting the interviews and classroom observation, the findings imply that teachers devised a combination of approaches that had implicit impacts on different aspects of DC-based on students' English proficiency while preserving their teaching philosophies. Such innovativeness could suggest a rudimentary framework for teaching and teacher training programs regarding fostering DC in speaking for EFL students.

TRAINING DISCUSSION WITH THE AIM OF FORMING STUDENTS’ DISCOURSE COMPETENCE

The article considers discursive competence (DC) as a component of intercultural and communicative competence. Discourse is the fundamental concept of DC, and knowledge of the types and genres of discourse is a necessary condition for its formation. Of interest to the authors of the article is a typology of discourses, the creator of which is the Russian scientist V.I. Karasik. In this typology, along with other discourses, pedagogical discourse (PD) is presented, which is of particular importance for research, since the addressee in this work is students of pedagogical specialties of a language university. PD is considered as a type of institutional discourse, and its components such as participants, chronotope, goals, values, strategies and genres are analyzed. Communicative strategies of pedagogical discourse are studied from the perspective of what genres they can be represented. A questionnaire was conducted among third-year students in order to identify the most popular pedagogical discourse genres in teaching. As a result, it was established that they are discussion, report, debate, conversation. The discussion is considered in the framework of the PD, and the scenario of its conduct is described with the aim of forming the discursive competence of students

On Enhancing Students’ Discourse Competence in Reading

Discourse competence, as important index in discourse analysis, plays an important role in developing learners’ receptive and productive skills in English. With good discourse competence, learners can understand spoken or written texts better, both at the local and global levels. Besides, they can produce more cohesive discourse to promote their speaking and writing abilities. However, English teaching classroom often focuses heavily on linguistic competence, weighing too much on vocabulary, and grammar. This paper aims to explore the relationship between cohesion and coherence and how to develop students’ discourse competence in reading.

CHALLENGES OF WRITING ACADEMIC ESSAYS AND WAYS OF OVERCOMING THEM

The paper highlights major challenges in writing academic essays. The article reveals the role of essay writing in studying, communication, creating and conveying information. The work on an academic essay requires development of three types of competences – metalinguistic, communicative and discourse competence. Difficulties in writing essays emerge when learners fail to recognize essential text properties – text cohesion and coherence, informativeness and modality. Lack of a deep analysis of the subject under study, superficial conclusions and poor analytical skills result in producing a one-dimensional, linear text. Insufficiently reasoned structure elements of the text can sometimes provoke learners to provide examples contrary to the topic sentence. The main way of solving this problem is making a logical and structural scheme, – an outline, before starting to write the text. It is equally important to follow the principle of ordering information, organizing the material in a certain succession, keeping the line of reasoning throughout the text. Learners can choose a relevant way of information organization – cause and effect, chronological, spacial and thematic. The article contains examples of exercises aimed at choosing an appropriate way of representing information and exercises for developing discourse competence. Another category of difficulties embraces lexical and stylistic, grammar and spelling mistakes. These errors deal with the operational dimension of the text and their prevention requires developing necessary competencies by doing special exercises to improve the technical aspects of writing. Writing an essay implies keeping to the language norms, grammar and stylistic accuracy. Scientific and research papers are characterized by developed syntactic constructions, complex sentences with clauses of cause and result, abstract vocabulary, while colloquial words and expressions must be omitted. Academic essay is viewed as a product of analytical research work, as a multidimensional text that integrates operational, cultural and critical components. The content of the academic text depends primarily on the depth of information analysis and its critical comprehension. The profound research work triggers the generation of new ideas. Regular and stage-by-stage work on writing the academic essay promotes the development of academic literacy skills. In addition, writing essays helps to train analytical and metalinguistic skills, shapes a personality, capable of thinking critically and articulating ideas.