Abstract:

Introduction:
One of the problems actively discussed in the modern pedagogical community is the quality of teacher education and, in particular, teaching methods and techniques used to raise the level of the teachers’ competencies and to develop their teaching skills. Lectures, being the main teaching method in colleges and universities, are much criticized as they do not provide an adequate level of student competence.
At the same time microteaching, invented in 1970s by Stanford University professors, is one of the most effective techniques designed specifically for the professional development of teachers.

Purpose of the work:
To explore the possibility of modernizing the traditional form of university education through the integration of lectures and microteaching technique. To study the effectiveness of microteaching as an instrument for the building and assessing professional competencies of students taking their degree in Foreign language teaching.

Research methodology and results:
The study was carried out in the form of a natural experiment, which was conducted during 5 years in the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia and involved 258 students. For this purpose, original microteaching model was adapted and integrated into the course “Methods of foreign language teaching”, traditionally presented in a form of lectures. For the purpose of experiment this format has been altered and combined with the knowledge acquisition phase of the microteaching procedure. As a result, in addition to the basic content of traditional methodology course focused mostly on knowledge of the basic concepts of language teaching and learning, a number of practical models of teaching skills and teacher behavior were presented. The final stage of methodology course was transformed into skill acquisition phase of the microteaching procedure, where students had to deliver the teaching component in a form of a simulation of a lesson, which they had developed within the topics of the course.

To assess the effectiveness of microteaching and to compare the results of traditional course in Methodology to the one incorporating Microteaching technique a variety of data collection and measurement tools were utilized: observation forms, traditional methodology test and anonymous survey.

The results of the study show that microteaching component of the traditional Methodology course is an effective tool in acquiring and improving teaching skills of the students. It was proved by very positive quantitative and qualitative feedback following the microteaching sessions. The average grade for all micro-lessons conducted during the observation period is 4.3 (based on 5-point scale). At the same time, the results of traditional methodological test show that students’ knowledge of the basic concepts of language teaching and learning were as good within the modified course, incorporating Microteaching component, as they were within the traditional Methodology course delivered mostly in a form of lectures. And finally, the anonymous survey conducted among the students taking the modified course showed that among all possible forms of learning activities within this discipline, microteaching was rated the highest compared to such activities as a common lecture, learning technologies session in a computer lab, an expert guest-speaker, a professional development session like conference or webinar, a research paper, or a project work.

Keywords:

Microteaching, teacher training techniques, teacher competencies, modernization of traditional teaching methods.