Abstract:

The authors highlight the importance and possible ways of problematization of educational material in teaching foreign language speaking at pedagogical university. We believe that the use of the technology of educational material problematization transforms the very essence of foreign language education, modifying its components, providing new opportunities in the professional training of future teachers. Problematization nurtures a teacher-facilitator, not aimed at informing students while presenting materials, but at modeling educational problem situations, the solution of which contributes to the students’ experience in various fields of knowledge and activity.

The object of the study is the process of teaching a foreign language at a university. The subject of the study is problematization of educational material and tasks in teaching foreign language speaking. The purpose of the study is to elaborate a technology allowing the teacher to problematize educational material and tasks when teaching foreign language speaking.

The impetus for the research on problematization was the experience of the authors of the article, which showed that the optimization of educational tasks is possible with the consistent application of the technology of educational material problematization using problem situations. The teacher’s modeling a problem situation includes two components: a substantive component - at the content level, and a psychological and pedagogical one – at the level of an assignment to the situation. In this regard, problematization can be investigated in two planes: objective and subjective. The contradiction can be objective, i.e. existing in the real world and presented in the content of the educational material, or subjective: between the need to solve a certain task and the lack of means for its solution. Thus, educational material problematization is understood by the authors as a dynamic process of transformation by the teacher of the proposed educational content in order to activate the students’ critical thinking by identifying a contradiction or problem and solving this problem on the basis of analysis, synthesis, generalization, and comparison.

Relying on the component composition of the problem situation (substantive component and psycho-pedagogical component), four stages were determined in the technology of problematization when teaching foreign language speaking.

The psycho-pedagogical stage of the technology includes methods of problematization at the level of the instruction, the description of the task for the situation, which is formulated proceeding from the fact that authentic documents themselves contain information that represents sociocultural or linguistic understatement for the Russian-speaking learner. The task encourages students to fill this gap.

The substantive stage – modeling a problem situation at the content level – is the removal of one or more elements from the text. Any text is inherent in the unsaid and missing, communication is aimed at filling these gaps.

The third and fourth stages contain control measures and reflection, respectively.

The research results showed positive dynamics in the development of foreign language speaking skills in the experimental group, whereas in the control group, where the problematization technology was not introduced, quantitative and qualitative outcomes were not statistically significant.

Keywords:

Problematization, problem situation, problem-based learning, critical thinking, teaching foreign language speaking.