Abstract:

The article describes the significance of the “Flipped classroom” technology in the educational process in connection with the following factors: on the one hand, in some countries, in Russia in particular, a number of normative legal acts aimed at the creation of a digital educational environment and the formation of digital competence of students is being adopted. On the other hand, the application of the flipped classroom is becoming inevitable owing to the transition of educational process to hybrid format during the pandemic. The aim of the research is to demonstrate the effectiveness and reasonability of the flipped classroom approach in teaching theoretical disciplines in a foreign language. The article analyzes the Russian projects on digitization of the educational environment, particularly, the new strategic academic leadership programme for the institutes of higher education, named “Priority-2030”. The research defends the need for innovative approaches in teaching with the use of information technologies. The paper uses empirical methods of research including questionnaire poll, monitoring, testing, scaling, educational experiment, arranged on the discipline “Theoretical grammar” among second-year bachelor students of Kazan Federal University (field of study: 45.03.02 Linguistics). Teaching in the experimental group was conducted on the basis of the digital educational resource, elaborated on the LMS Moodle platform. The experiment consisted of three stages and involved two groups of students: control and experimental ones. The prethreshold stage implied preparatory work of students for upcoming classes. The threshold stage includes their work directly within the classroom time. As for the post-threshold stage – the students fulfil their tasks after their class sessions. Each stage is described in terms of similarities and differences in teaching in both groups. The students write their final test when the experiment is over. The test results demonstrate great success in the experimental group. The study found the factors explaining reasonability and effectiveness of the “Flipped classroom” technology in teaching theoretical disciplines in a foreign language at university.

The first factor is preliminary theoretical knowledge acquisition at the prethreshold stage. The second factor is activization of learning and cognitive activity in terms of teacher-guided discussions on different themes, case study (at the threshold stage). At the post-threshold stage the experimental group has plenty of time for the acquired knowledge consolidation in distance learning format before the final test.

It is proved that under the lower number of hours for in-class sessions and more hours for the students` self-paced study of theoretical disciplines at university traditional technologies of teaching are insufficient for activization of speech and cognitive activities of students in a foreign language, for their communicative competence forming.

Keywords:

Flipped classroom, foreign language, student, motivation, educational process, theoretical disciplines.