Abstract:

Acquiring translator profession is extremely topical due to the continuous growth of information flows around the world. As long as the translation of the scientific and technical discourse is much in demand, it seems logical to us to focus on this area in training linguistic majors at Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU). Teaching technical translation to master degree students is constantly improved, and every year new forms of educational work are introduced with the purpose of revealing their advantages and disadvantages.

For students studying technical translation, vocabulary acquisition becomes a serious problem, and the instructor needs to draw students’ attention to memorizing not only individual words, but collocations of scientific and technical discourse. Since the number of lexical exercises aimed at activating glossary of terms is, as a rule, insufficient for students, it is necessary we develop a communicative-cognitive methodology of mastering the terminological glossary in technical translation class.

Therefore, the main objectives of the article are the following:
- to evaluate communicative-cognitive methodology of teaching translators, with communicative activities accentuated in class, while cognitive activities encouraged in the mode of students’ independent out-of-class work;
- to analyze some electronic resources helpful in organizing students’ independent cognitive work (crosswords, context.reverso.net resource, videos, etc.);
- to determine the most beneficial pedagogical techniques of teaching students in communicative and cognitive modes;
- to give proper examples of both modes of work.

Communicative tasks for professionally-oriented video discussions stimulate the use of the terms, which students memorized in the course of completing their cognitive tasks fulfilled independently as part of their homework. In general, as it follows from our testing of the above methodology in class, communication based on students’ participation in cognitive tasks, which they do on their own using electronic resources, is quite successful, although further testing is to be carried out.

Keywords:

Scientific and technical discourse, master degree students, terminology, communication, cognitive tasks, electronic resources, communicative and cognitive modes.