Abstract:

Interaction between professional life, societal evolution and higher education is an important prerequisite for educational literature innovation. It contributes to the personal development of not only a technicalist but a key person meeting challenges of international projects and taking full advantage of a specialized foreign language to obtain the latest information. The study of French by students specializing in landscape architecture and gardening provides opportunities of a cross-cultural approach to the design of gardens and urbanization.

The organization of a new textbook for French learners has been discussed, and in particular, the creative tasks requiring an analysis of a large amount of information and compression skills. The creative assignments can be divided into the following groups:
1) Lexical ones, for example: "Make a portrait of a typical landscape designer using the selected text expressions"; "Select the figurative expressions and define their functions in the text";
2) Translational ones, for example: "Describe the search algorithm for the equivalent of the term "soudure à la louche";
3) Speech, oral and written, for example: "Describe in writing the design of the garden on the scheme, suggest options for planting"; "Create a professional profile of the famous French designer." Creative activities can become forms of control as well: presentation of Power Point ("Fountains as an element of landscape architecture") with the insertion of pictures and animations; student video ("I am a future landscape designer"); audio recording ("Make a walking guide of a garden"), comics ("Compose a message in the language of flowers"); infograms ("Estimate plants planting"); creative graphic tasks ("Develop a flower bed design”; photo ("Photograph the cut and describe the composition of the soils in the garden"); field surveys (“Make a photo report in supermarkets on the eco-labels and packaging"). To discuss and to defend one's point of view we propose dialogues on the gardening emphasizing communicative units, for example: “Read the microtexts and put them in the form of a dialogue between an enthusiast who decided to plant truffles in Paris and an official who does not want to give permission for such a project”.

As the textbook is aimed at mastering modern concepts of landscape design in the Russian and French culture of the 21st century, tasks that relate to the personal participation of students in the life of the University are especially effective. The most important are tasks which require the analysis of a large volume of multilingual information and further compression of the material.

Keywords:

Foreign language for specific purposes, French language, creative tasks, communicative competence, landscape design, gardening.