Abstract:

Case study is a very effective approach in foreign language teaching developing socio-cultural skills of students. Undoubtedly, it can be used at the stage of foreign language teaching when students are able to reflect in a foreign language. It could be applied as the main method in business language teaching.

This article deals with the analysis of the case study approach in English classes at the economic faculty of a non-linguistic university. Using the pedagogical modeling method we have analyzed and generalized the advantages of that approach in teaching.

Today, case study is an especially topical approach in teaching foreign languages because of changes in the education system in Russia. The necessity of using that method at classes is caused by two trends.

The first one follows from the tendency of the education evolution on the whole. According to the new standards the education should be aimed not only at obtaining knowledge but rather at gaining professional competence, skills and abilities of mental activity. Teachers have to stimulate and develop the abilities of the identity and personality. It is mostly important to help the students to gain the skills of perception and processing of the huge information volume today.

Secondly, it derives from the requirements to the qualifications of the future specialists who should posses all named abilities and also should be able to cope with different work situations, to effectively interact in work environment, especially in crises.

We believe that case study is the right method for students to enhance their creative skills. In class we use student’s books which contain case studies. They are based on realistic business problems or situations and are created to motivate and actively engage students. As a rule, students are involved in discussing business problems and at the end come to the solutions through active group work. The achieved results fully correspond to the set goals.

The absolute advantage of the method is that we organize the group work on the common problem, using and processing the information given in conditions of the limited time. It is also a good opprtunity for students to deeply reflect the theoretical concepts, and to design the new models of activity, training of the skills to generalize the information and develop their communicative skills.

Keywords:

Case study, socio-cultural interaction, pedagogical modeling method, work environment, communicative skills training.