Abstract:

Students nowadays have to be actively involved in research, which is considered to be one of the most important competences of a future engineer. Not only do students have to know their area of expertise and apply critical thinking for their research to be successful but they also need to be proficient in the scientific style of speech to express their ideas properly in their native langugae. This involves such skills as reading, understanding and interpreting published scientific texts, writing their own research papers according to the stylistic norms and submission guidelines.

The authors of the report suggest employing project-based learning (PBL) to master technology students’ skills in the scientific style within the framework of the course “Scientific Style of the Russian Language”. The course was piloted in Tomsk Polytechnic University. It is structured as a real research project with active participation of both students and professors.

The core idea of the PBL can be specified as follows: the course is designed as a genuine collaborative research project implemented by technology students under the guidance of a linguistic professor. The area of expertise is linguistics and the related sciences. The choice of a linguistic topic as a research area for future engineers is conditioned by several reasons. First, the language material allows to create common ground for all project participants – native speakers, which enables collaborative research where the linguistic professor’s role implies moderating the process and consulting but not knowledge disseminating. Second, participating in a linguistic project contributes to the students’ better results in mastering their scientific style skills as they do not only apply the language but also investigate it.

Owing to the PBL in teaching the scientific style, the students acquire indispensable theoretical knowledge about writing research papers and the language of science pursuing the practical goal – to do their own research. The knowledge is promptly put into practice; the whole process is monitored by a linguistic professor. As a result, the students do not only receive the knowledge of dealing with a scientific text but they are also involved in a genuine research project; their work is result-oriented. Moreover, they get hands-on experience in writing a research paper according to the scientific style requirements with further presenting their results at the conference and publishing an article in a scientific journal. The results obtained make it possible to draw a conclusion that the method is efficient in reaching the course goals to develop speech competences which can be applied by students in scientific communication.

Keywords:

Scientific style of speech, project-based learning, students’ research.