Kazakhstan’s entrance to the Bologna process requires higher educational institution system to be reformed in accordance with the standards accepted on the European continent. Major goals of the Bologna process are: changing the system of training specialists with the transition to two educational levels: Bachelor and Master; creating the system of equal scientific degrees; and working out a unified system of test units ECTS.
Within the frames of the Bologna process Kazakhstani higher educational institutions are starting to realize academic process in accordance with the European standards. State language as a discipline has become an integral part of the specialist training process. Practical Kazakh language course has gained a professional-communicational character, and its goals are defined by, mainly, communicative and cognitive needs of a specialist.
The most disputable issues in teaching a foreign language in the context of the Bologna process are the control and assessment of students’ knowledge, organization of their independent work and individualization of the learning process. The first step for the Kazakhstani higher educational institutions in this respect has been introduction of the system for module control of students’ knowledge which must significantly stimulate their systematic work. Module control is a part of the module system of training accepted in the Bologna convention countries.
Language training is an expansion of academic and professional knowledge, and professional vocabulary as well; skills to read texts of various difficulty in the original and aimed at obtaining information and using it for various objectives; listening skills; skills to speak on every day practical and professional themes and express their opinions on certain issues. At different stages can occur separate modules: separate topic; a complex of topics which are given for the module control; preparation complex, ensuring knowledge level; set of lexical and other modules, for instance, grammar module, etc.
Implementation of the module teaching and European credit-transfer system (ECTS) requires changes in the existing knowledge assessment system to ensure more objective evaluation. Knowledge assessment is one of the significant indices which identify on what level is the student’s mastering of the academic material, and development of the student’s ability to think and work independently. Testing is an integral part of the learning process and comparatively objective method of students’ knowledge assessment.
The objectivity of the tests is achieved by standardizing the testing process and checking of the quality of certain test assignments and the test as a whole. There is no a universal control system, it always has exact goals. The more exact the control type is, the more accurate results we receive from students International Journal of Innovative Technologies in Social Science 2(4)November 2017 37 with different preparation levels.
While creating test questions, a teacher, as a rule, takes into consideration only one skill in various types of the speech competency (listening, reading, speaking, and writing), or testing in various aspects of the language competency (phonetics, lexis, grammar). Test is given only in case the teacher comes to a conclusion that a certain skill is developed as a result of numerous training exercises held during a certain period of time.
Test assignments are broken down into the following types: close-ended assignments, openended assignments, equivalence assignments, sequence assignments, crosswords, chain words, etc. It is important to make tests of different difficulty levels as the notion of the test is to obtain the most objective data on students’ knowledge level.
At present one of the major issues in the educational process is improving the organization of the Student’s Independent Work (SIW). And though SIW is not defined as a term, researchers and practitioners in the educational process highlight such aspects as organizationaltechnical, educational, and psychological. The first question is “Can students work independently?” According to numerous survey findings, answer to this question was mainly negative. Researcher’s state that 45 % of students admit that they cannot plan and organize their independent work; 65.8 % of the respondents cannot plan and manage their time effectively; and 85 % of students consider that time cannot be managed at all.
The respondents stated that obtaining, processing, interpretation and analysis of the essential information causes significant difficulties for them. It leads to the problem of formation of students’ ability to work independently. Solution for this problem supposes increasing students’ learning motivation, and stimulating their interest to the learning process. One of the ways to solve the given problem by the higher educational institutions is a mandatory reading of the foreign language literature on the future occupation of a student.
Outside-class reading is one of the SIW activity types. Its goal is to develop skills to read authentic texts on the future specialty of a student on an advanced level with an aim to obtain information and its use for self-education and self-learning purposes. To check students’ comprehension of the information read from these authentic sources we offer communicative tasks and tests for self-assessment providing with the answer keys and right answers.
While organizing SIW it is important to take into consideration individualization of the learning process. A certain theme can serve as an individual assignment which is given in the form of the collection of texts from mass media sources (newspapers, magazines, and internet). A course at a higher educational institution has profession-centered character, that is why its objectives are defined, firstly, by communicative and cognitive needs of specialists of the corresponding profile, and it includes study of the language structure, thinking, socio-psychological specifics of the speech and communication activity, and modeling and learning communicative interaction situations.
Thus, a teacher of Kazakh as a state language in a Russians-speaking group (and Russian and foreign languages as the second language) has to reorganize an academic process including SIW and its methodical basis, testing students’ speech competency (reading, speaking, listening) and language competency (professional vocabulary, grammar), creating test assignments as SIW assessment type, and implementing module and rating system of learning and assessment.
REFERENCES
1. Nyyazbekova K. S. Using module technology at a higher educational institution. // Materials of the VІI International scientific-practical conference «Science and education». The Czech Republic (Prague), 27.12.2010.-05.01.2011, Pedagogical sciences series. p. 80-84.
2. Nyyazbekova K. S. Professional Kazakh language (for Departments of Geography-Ecology, and Chemistry-Bioology). // Methodical aid. – «IP Volkova», Almaty, 2011. – p.88.
3. Nyyazbekova K. S. Methods of teaching professional lexis. // Materials of the VIII International scientific-practical conference «Perspective scientific research works», Bulgaria, 17-25 February, Pedagogical sciences series, Volume 8 (Sofia-2011) p. 52-55.
Created by Turashbek Y.
