Abstract:

The Swedish language has been gaining more and more popularity in Lithuania. The reasons for the increase of the popularity of the Swedish language can be explained by close geographical and cultural distance between the countries and constantly expanding business relationships and investments. Sweden is also one of the biggest investors in Lithuania, which, in turn, requires labour force with the skills and proficiency of Swedish. The popularity of the Swedish language also is reflected by the number of students who choose to study the Swedish language at universities as one of the electives. Swedish has been offered at Kaunas University of Technology since 2014. The number of students, studying the Swedish language at Kaunas University of Technology has significantly increased during the several years.
At the same time the profile of the students has been changing. Net-generation students enter universities and traditional didactic methods are no longer as efficient as they were in the past. The main reason for this is different skills and abilities of net generation students, especially the way they accept and read information and accept different learning styles. The development of net-generation people is highly affected by information technologies. Multitasking, the wish to receive information very quickly, shorter to time of concentration to one task are just few features of the net generation students that require teachers to apply different methods of learning in classroom settings.
Taking this into consideration, the paper aims to analyse didactic methods and practices that have been efficient for teaching the Swedish language at a technical university. For the methodological underpinning of the research presented in the article, the paper focuses and applies action-oriented approach in foreign language teaching. The main objectives of the article seek to define the recent trends of didactics, related to foreign language teaching in terms of the updated Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (2018); present action oriented approach as an innovative approach in foreign language teaching/learning; provide theoretical insights about the profile of the net-generation students; describe a particular case of teaching Swedish as a foreign language at Kaunas University of Technology when combining new approach in language teaching; and discuss student experience of the foreign language learning as the second or third foreign language. The feedback of students was collected during the period from 2013 till 2019 by means of using semi-structured questionnaires and qualitative and quantitative analysis. The results of the research demonstrate a positive feedback of students related to the use of action-oriented approach in terms of foreign language learning. Students find the learning of the language more engaging and interesting. However, at the same time the research results indicate that action-oriented approach raises challenges to both students and the teacher due to the fact that active learning/teaching methods require much more cognitive efforts of students, which sometimes is viewed as the drawback of the method. Yet, the results of the research support the idea that active learning methods, such as action oriented approach, design thinking or problem based learning when combined with tradition methods of teaching are efficient in foreign language learning and teaching.

Keywords:

modern didactic, digital didactics, language learning, action-oriented approach