During this case study the specific features of foreign language teaching process to students of sport faculty was taken into account

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IRSTI 14.35.09 https://doi.org/10.26577/JES.2022.v71.i2.019 E. Bakytzhan^1* , A. Zhaitapova²

1Kazakh Academy of Sport and Tourism, Kazakhstan, Almaty

2Ablai Khan Kazakh University of International Relations and World Languages, Kazakhstan, Almaty

CASE STUDY ON DEVELOPMENT

OF PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE OF SPORT FACULTY STUDENTS

(Non-Linguistic university)

This work includes a case study on formation and development of professional communicative competence of sport faculty students in the process of foreign language teaching. The article defines the significance of formation of professional communicative competence of non-linguistic specialty students (sport faculty) and identifies its components. The literature review of domestic and foreign scientists’

works on the theme of professional communicative competence has been done by the authors. The study is based on teacher’s investigation and observation of students’ effective changes in language learning. The correlation of student’s thematic preference in language learning is recently-developed within this study. A special program for students was modeled in accordance with the theme of sport nutrition. During this case study the specific features of foreign language teaching process to students of sport faculty was taken into account. All language material was selected from authentic books which definitely effected to get positive results in the end of study. The special course included the usage of interactive technologies during the classes which definitely affected to the high performance of students at the end of investigation. The applicability of the article has been proved by students’ high results and makes it possible for further potential use in foreign language teaching for students of sport faculty.

Key words: professional communicative competence, non-linguistic university, teaching foreign language.

Э. Бақытжан^1*, А. Жайтапова²

1Қазақ Спорт және Туризм Академиясы, Қазақстан, Алматы қ.

2Абылай хан атындағы Қазақ Халықаралық Қатынастар және Әлем тілдері Университеті, Қазақстан, Алматы қ.

*e-mail: [email protected] Спорт факультеті студенттерінің

шеттілдік коммуникативтік құзіреттілігін дамытуға арналған кейс стади (тілдік емес ЖОО)

Берілген жұмыс спорт факультеті студенттерінің шетел тілін оқыту үдерісінде кәсіби коммуникативтік құзыреттілігін қалыптастыру және дамыту бойынша жүргізілген кейс- стадиді қамтиды. Мақалада лингвистикалық емес мамандық студенттерінің (спорт факультеті) кәсіби коммуникативтік құзыреттілігін қалыптастырудың маңыздылығы айқындалып, оның құрамдас бөліктері анықталған. Авторлармен кәсіби бағытталған коммуникативтік құзыреттілік тақырыбына арналған отандық және шетелдік ғалымдардың еңбектеріне әдеби шолу жасалды.

Мақала мұғалімдердің зерттеуі мен студенттердің тіл үйренудегі тиімді өзгерістерін бақылауға негізделе отырып жазылған. Студенттердің тілді меңгерудегі тақырыптық бейімділігінің корреляциясы осы зерттеу аясында жасалды. Спорттық тамақтану тақырыбына сәйкес студенттерге арналған арнайы бағдарлама зерттеу барысында модельденді. Берілген зерттеу спорт факультеті студенттеріне шетел тілін оқыту үрдісінің өзіндік ерекшеліктерін ескере отырып жасалды. Барлық тілдік материалдар түпнұсқа кітаптардан таңдалып алынуы зерттеу соңында оң нәтижеге қол жеткізуге әсер етті. Арнайы курс сабақ барысында интерактивті технологиялар қолданылды, бұл өз кезегінде зерттеу соңында студенттердің жоғары үлгеріміне әсер етті. Мақаланың қолдану мүмкіндігі студенттердің жоғары нәтижелерімен дәлелденді және спорт факультетінің студенттеріне шет тілін оқытуда одан әрі пайдалануға мүмкіндік береді.

Түйін сөздер: кәсіби коммуникативті құзырет, тілдік емес универстет, шетел тілін оқыту.

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Э. Бақытжан^1*, А. Жайтапова²

1*Казахская Академия Спорта и Туризма, Казахстан, г. Алматы

2Казахский Университет Международных Отношений и Мировых языков, Казахстан, г. Алматы

*e-mail: [email protected] Кейс-стади развития

профессиональной коммуникативной компетенции студентов спортивного факультета неязыкового университета

Статья рассказывает о кейсе по формированию и развитию профессиональной коммуни- кативной компетенции студентов спортивного факультета в процессе обучения иностранному языку. Использовались методы исследования – литературный обзор работ отечественных и зарубежных ученых по теме профессиональной коммуникативной компетенции, анализ и сравнение, обобщение педагогического опыта, наблюдение, опрос, опытно-педагогическое исследование. Преподаватель обобщил инновационный опыт, наблюдал за эффективными изменениями учащихся в изучении языка. В рамках этого исследования была выявлена взаимосвязь тематических предпочтений учащихся в изучении языка и результатов обучения.

Специальная программа для студентов была смоделирована в соответствии с темой спортивного питания. В кейсе учитывались особенности процесса обучения иностранному языку студентов факультета спорта. Языковой учебный материал был отобран из аутентичных книг, что однозначно повлияло на получение положительных результатов в конце обучения. Специальный курс предусматривал использование интерактивных технологий на занятиях, что способствовало высокой успеваемости студентов. Кейс может быть использован в дальнейшем при обучении иностранным языкам студентов спортивного факультета. В исследовании приняли участие 30 студентов факультета спорта Казахской академии спорта и туризма.

Ключевые слова: профессиональная коммуникативная компетенция, неязыковой универси- тет, обучение иностранному языку.

Introduction

From the beginning of XXI century with its global transformation and rapid development of intercultural communication, fundamental issue of any society is to focus on forming communicative competence of specialists of any area. Professional communicative competence gives them an opportu- nity to observe global changes within their sphere of work, take part in international conferences and exchange knowledge and experience with colleagues from foreign countries. Therefore foreign language teaching at university degree plays a key role in meeting the needs of society. This issue started to attract much attention in our country with rapid rise of social order for high qualified specialists with intercultural communicative competence. Initial at- tempts done by an American linguist Dell Hymes focus on identifying the cause of this issue (Hymes, 1979:240) [1]. According to him while teaching foreign language the main attention should be paid not only to language competence, but also to the ability to use foreign language in real life situations. There- fore for an effective communication it is not enough to know grammar and lexis units of language, it is important to be able to use them in appropriate situations. Otherwise there is no need of knowledge of

language material if students do not have compre- hension of usage it in situations of necessity. The idea is to concentrate the main focus on communication creating subject related situations in classroom.

The continuation of author’s idea was demonstrated in works of Merill Swain and Canale Mi- chael in 1980 (Canale&Swain, 1980: 1-47)[2]. They supported Dell Hymes’ point of view and extended the idea of communicative approach in second language teaching. Their study suggests that communicative approach for teaching foreign language cannot be apart from grammatical and sociolinguistic skills. Thus the actual demonstration of language should be integrated with real authentic situations.

The authors claim that communicative approach to teaching second language is a whole system of competences which cannot stand apart from following sub-competences:

- Linguistic competence according to authors is the knowledge of language code. They explain this competence as the ability to use words and sentences in accordance with grammar, morphol- ogy, phonology and lexis rules. During past years of foreign language teaching methodology this competence played a key role as teachers draw student’s attention on learning grammar material and vocabulary;

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- Sociolinguistic competence is explained by authors as the knowledge of social norms and rules, the authority of speaker and etc. They include such abilities as to answer requests, show and present speaker’s wishes as well as to be able to keep communication at any kind of social situation. Society is an integral part of any communication, as students learn all the norms living in society, for this reason it is important to create foreign language society for them, as every culture differ from each other.

I.L. Bim notes that professional communicative competence focuses on the formation of the ability to carry out an activity, as well as the readiness to actually carry it out and at the same time to obtain a practical result of this activity (Bim, 1996, 48-52) [3].

The founder of foreign language education in the Republic of Kazakhstan S.S.Kunanbayeva presents the basics of the formation of professional communicative competence. In her work “Theory and Practice of Modern Foreign Language Edu- cation” (Kunanbayeva, 2010:46)[4], the scientist gives detailed definition of this issue and analyzes the views of various scholars. She promotes the idea of trilingual education and points out the constant effectiveness of this approach. At the initiative of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan K.K.

Tokayev, the “State Program of Education Develop- ment of the Republic of Kazakhstan for 2020-2025”

has set significant goals and objectives in this direc- tion [5]. One of the tasks set in the implementation of the goals of the program is the improvement of foreign language teaching. The program states that in order to organize trilingual education, universities will continue to train teachers who teach subjects in English, and many universities will have foreign partners. The program will continue to create a re- gional educational hub and attract foreign teachers and students to the best universities. All these tasks increase the role of foreign languages in all universities of the Republic of Kazakhstan and lead to their use as a key component. However the problematic aspect in the process of implementation above mentioned program is a low language level of non-linguistic university students. As a teacher working at non-linguistic university it was noted that students would face various problems in this process. To follow the tasks set by the President of Republic of Kazakhstan there remains a need for development of foreign language competencies of students and to create maximum conditions for teaching pro- fessionally oriented foreign language. With above

mentioned variants of problem solving it is possible to implement President’s program, as students will be able to communicate in foreign language, at- tend lectures of foreign professors in the subject of their profession as well as it opens doors to further professional development. In order to check the effectiveness of above mentioned hypothesis we de- cided to organize a case study correlating English courses and lectures on the theme of student’s future profession. The present paper presents a case study on the basis of two week lecture held by a foreign scientist invited by university. Here we demonstrate remarkable changes and practical improvements of students during the period of given case study. The purpose of this study is to describe and examine how formation of professional communicative competence may influence successfully on further professional development of the students of non-linguistic universities.

Methodology and methods of research

The current investigation involved questioning and analyzing the final results of case study during foreign language teaching within two weeks.

This study was carried out with thirty students of sport faculty at Kazakh Academy of Sport and Tourism. In accordance with state program for development of foreign language education different lecturers are regularly invited to hold seminars for implementation of joint educational and research programs for students. In March, 2019 a professor of St Andrews University from Great Britain Ron- ald Moughan organized two weeks seminar for the students of professional sport faculty in the theme

“Sport in my life. What do we need to know about sport nutrition?” (Moughan, 2012)[6]. The seminar took general characteristics in the format of lectures and continued for two weeks, each lecture lasted for about ninety minutes: 60 minutes for lecture and 30 minutes for discussion of the theme. At the end of seminar students were assessed by the results of their home tasks and final examination taken by professor’s team. With the aim of correlation seminar and English language classes for our investigation 30 students of group FOS-101 and FOS-102 (Fac- ulty of Olympic Sport) were chosen to take part in case study. The language level of above mentioned group students is A2. In order to obtain students’

general attitude towards lectures in foreign language a questionnaire was carried out on the third day of seminar. 250 participants of given seminar took part in questioning. The following questions with YES-

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No answers were included (only third question had a choice of variants):

1. Are you satisfied with a teacher and the theme (Nutrition in Sport) of the seminar?

2. Do you find difficult to understand the lecture and communicate with a lecturer?

3. If you answered “yes” to previous question, what do you find difficult, choose true for you.

(1. Terminology; 2. To make mistakes; 3. Culture difference; 4. No difficulties)

Despite the chosen answers students stayed in their groups as initially were divided. In an attempt to organize effective courses, with the permission of Professor Ronald, lecture materials of seminar were selected for developing a program for two weeks.

Group 101(17 students) have been chosen to learn special program created by teachers in accordance with the seminar theme. The program included the following themes:

1. Nutrition in Sport (90 minutes)

2. The benefits of eating well (90 minutes) 3. Carbohydrates in diet (45 minutes) 4. Needs for protein (45 minutes)

Meanwhile group 102 remained learning general English according to educational program. Both groups simultaneously took part in seminar of Pro- fessor Ronald and at the same time studied English;

group 101 with special program created by teachers in accordance with seminar theme, and group 102 studied constantly general English. In order to accent to communicative approach of foreign language teaching and indicate effectiveness of earlier mentioned system different methods of teaching were used during the course. To keep an authentic- ity of language and to create real life situations we found following interactive methods reasonable:

brainstorming, video technology, project based tasks, mind mapping and etc.

On the basis of scientists’ work these interactive technologies, especially video technology, increase learners’ interests to accept language material and create beneficial conditions to communicate (Aiex, 1988:15)[7]. The aim of study was to examine

and note the differences of students’ results in two groups implying the importance of formation of professional communicative competence of learners.

Every lesson students of group 101 were given to watch a 10 minute video with pre-, while- and post watching activities. For brainstorming activity we have used figures and pictures from lecture materials. The task was to comment on the picture which describes healthy weight, obesity trends and energy balance. During the lesson on the theme “The benefits of eating well” students of special program worked on following tasks:

• Look at the Figure 1 which presents international comparison of obesity trends. Give your point of view why the United States of America takes the first rate.

• Read the text “Are you a healthy weight?”.

Do the test and calculate your own Body Mass Index.

Compare your results with your group mates. Give recommendations to students who have BMI of 30 and more as it indicates an obese. Use modal verbs.

• Make a project work in accordance with text

“Weight Management”. Choose one product and analyze calories in it. Compare with group mate’s results. Decide which product is healthier. Describe it using comparative degree of adjectives.

In order to create comfortable conditions for communication the program for special course has been organized in accordance of student’s subject of interest, as well as vocabulary has been selected very specially. Within these two weeks students have been taught special thematic words. Before start of each lesson new words have been presented with pictures for brainstorming activity with the following task:

• Guess the meaning of following words and match with appropriate pictures.

• Match these definitions with right words.

Try to give an example for each word.

All new words have been selected from texts, brochures and booklets of lectures by professor. The table 1 below demonstrates vocabulary used for experimental group during the course.

Table 1 – Vocabulary

“Nutrition in sport” “The benefits from eating” “Carbohydrates in diet” “Needs for protein”

Fresh food To consume wholesome food

Appropriate amount Day-to-day practice

Busy lifestyle Sensible weight

Eating habit Energy and vitality Imbalance in dietary Diet-related disorders

Scurvy Anaemia

Body Mass Index A healthy weight Underweight Energy intake Carbohydrate energy high glycaemic index

Bread roll Reserve in the muscle

Blood glucose level Exercise performance

Preceding hours Overall recovery

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At the end of seminar students were assessed by professor’s team, and results of tests were selected and compared with others. Although time spent for this study was less than ideal, the results after study show the effectiveness of previously mentioned program.

Discussions and results of study

Since the preliminary intention was to find out the attitude of seminar participants (here students of the first grade of sport faculty), on the whole the results of questionnaire held on third day of seminar showed that there were some difficulties they faced.

According to the answers 235 students out of 250 were interested in the seminar because of the actu- ality of theme and overall intention to take part in it. Students found seminar attractive as it was inter- related with their future professional development.

Majority of them were open to new knowledge they would gain from it. Despite this positive numbers almost 85 percent of participants found the seminar difficult and faced some issues to communicate with foreign professor. Some students reported that due to less knowledge of thematic vocabulary they faced some difficulties in overall understanding of the lecture. As detailed in Fig.1 an adequate number (45%) of students demonstrated that the most difficult aspect in communication was lack of knowledge of terminology. As they found obstacles in understanding of professor’s speech accordingly it was a whole set of problem to express their point of view with no knowledge of vocabulary.

Figure 1 – Difficulties in communication

This case can be explained with absence of knowledge of language material in accordance with their sphere of profession given during foreign language classes. Due to this reason the experimental

program included considerable amount of language material in the theme of sport and nutrition for students of group 101 (“Nutrition in sport”, “The benefits from eating”, “Carbohydrates in diet”, “Needs for protein”), set of vocabulary used during the course is given in table 1 above; group 102 students continued studying English in accordance of educational program (New English File, 3^rd edition:

“Neighbors from the hell”, “When a man is tired of London”).

Apparently students from group 101 were able to show strong results during communication and as it was noted they took active part in the discussion of seminar theme using new vocabulary they have learnt whereas students from group 102 showed slightly lower participation. This observation is also proved by student’s intention (group 102) to learn thematic vocabulary. Later on the teacher of this group reported that during the classes some of them showed an interest in new words asking their mean- ings and content of usage.

During the lecture of the professor students from experimental group could get into communication in accordance with the theme as they have had vocabulary background. 18 students out of 30 (both groups) were able to calculate their Body Mass Index and discuss the reasons of obesity and how to predict it.

It was predicted that noticeable amount of participants would hesitate to communicate with foreign lecturer because of fear to make mistakes and cultural backgrounds of Kazakh and English peo- ple. It can be identified from Figure 1 where almost half participants of questionnaire mentioned about how culture differences and mistakes commonly cause communication obstacles; 15% of students choose culture difference and 25% have fear to make mistakes during communication. Only a few percent of students (15%) answered that they had no difficulties during the course at all. Analyzing these answers it was found out where only students with prior experience of study exchange and high level of English had no obstacles in communicat- ing. Apparently due to lack of knowledge (culture background, language material etc.) students face anxiety as mentioned earlier during foreign language communication which relatively affects further learning process. This issue is mentioned by MacIntyre and Gardner (MacIntyre&Gardner, 1989:75-251) [8] in 1989. The authors pointed out that it might often cause difficulties in learning performance. According to the studies students with high communicative anxiety tend to perform

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very low results on oral and written communication. This is of great theoretical and practical importance and implies for future study.

At the end of seminar Professor Ronald Moughan kindly agreed to share his end-of-course results. Ac- cording to final examination results only 45% of all participants reached positive points, which means that less than half of students understood the ma-

terial. Therefore graph below shows overall results of students, where 135 students out of 300 reached satisfied points, almost half of participants (120) got points between 40-69, and 45 learners could not get satisfied points and accordingly did not receive cer- tificate. These numbers show low level of language readiness of students, their low motivation and other many more factors of it.

Figure 2 – Overall results after the course

What beneficial for us from this figure is that our students are in the list of participants who got higher points. All 30 students of experimental group reached between 75-90 points, which present their high professional acquaintance with lecture material. After getting these results our team became more confident of the organized course which was a prove of its effectiveness.

Conclusion

Prior works and studies underline the significance of communicative approach as this leads to an effective learning of foreign language. Many linguists including Kazakhstani scientists point out the effectiveness of methodology based on above mentioned approach and make successful progress in foreign language teaching in our country. On the basis of these works state educational programs are in implementation for further development of trilingual educational system. However these studies have either not been focused on methodology for non-linguistic universities or have had less contribu- tion on professional development of communicative competence of non-linguistic university students through teaching foreign language. In this case study we examined and described the influence of communicative competence through improvement of new program specially created in accordance with seminar theme in the field of professional sport.

We found out that:

• choosing themes for program in accordance with their future sphere of work brought high effective results during communication;

• vocabulary presentation in the following themes “Nutrition in sport”, “The benefits from eating”, “Carbohydrates in diet”, “Needs for protein” made students understand discourse of lecturer easily;

• students from experimental group had less language barriers because of absence of fear to make mistakes, they felt free to ask questions and showed initiations to be first to answer.

Within the study it was noted students’ positive attitude and high interest in a given theme. Accord- ing to final results of professor’s assessment participants of experimental group showed high results.

This factor made us come to following conclusions:

• it is very important to follow the following rule in selection of vocabulary: subject of student’s interest should be taken in account in accordance with his future profession;

• as we teach language at non English speaking country and students study at non linguistic university more communicative situations should be created in order to make students feel free in real life communication;

• interactive technologies, as video, brainstorming, project work are very effective tools in order to achieve the aim.

These findings extend those of Dell Hymes, con- firming that language is not just taught to be learnt

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rules and language units, the main attention must be paid to communicative approach, otherwise there is no need of teaching at all [1]. In addition this case study considered improvements of communicative competence of non-language university students, noting the absence of real life communicative situ-

ations. Most notably, this is the one of first study to investigate language skills of sport faculty students.

Our results provide compelling evidence of necessity of long-term investigation of intercultural communicative competence of non-linguistic university students, especially students of sport faculty.

Литература

1 Hymes, D. On communicative competence. The communicative approach to language teaching, pp.240-245, Oxford: Ox- ford University Press, 1979

2 Canale, M., & Swain, M. Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied linguistics, pp 1-47, 1980

3 Bim, I.L. The objectives of learning a foreign language as part of the basic course. Foreign languages at school, 1, 48-52, 19964 Кунанбаева, С. С. Теория и практика современного иноязычного образования. – Алматы: Дом печати «Эдельвейс», 2010. c.46

5 Государственная программа развития образования Республики Казахстан на 2020-2025, https://adilet.zan.kz/rus/

docs/P1900000988

6 Ronald Moughan, “A guide to nutrition and hydration for active healthy lifestyles”, 2012, July, UK

7 Aiex, N.K. Using film, video, and TV in the classroom. ERIC Digest, No 11. Bloomington, IN: ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skills, 1988

8 MacIntyre, P.D. and Gardner, R.C. Anxiety and Second Language Learning: Toward a Theoretical Clarification. Language Learning, 39, 75-251, 1989

References

Aiex, N.K. (1988) Using film, video, and TV in the classroom. ERIC Digest, 11. Bloomington. ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skills.

Bim, I.L. (1996) The objectives of learning a foreign language as part of the basic course. Foreign languages at school, 48-52.

Canale, M., & Swain, M. (1980) Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Ap- plied linguistics.

Gosudarstvennaja programma razvitija obrazovanija Respubliki Kazahstan na 2020-2025 (2019) [The State Program for development of Education in RK for 2020-2025], https://adilet.zan.kz/rus/docs/P1900000988 (In Russian)

Hymes, D. (1979) On communicative competence. The communicative approach to language teaching, 240-245.

Kunanbayeva, S. S. (2010) Teoriya i praktika sovremennogo inoyazychnogo obrazovaniya [Theory and practice of modern foreign language education]. Almaty, Edelveiss Printing House, p. 94-261. (In Russian)

MacIntyre, P.D. & Gardner, R.C. (1989). Anxiety and Second Language Learning: Toward a Theoretical Clarification. Lan- guage Learning, 39, 75-251.

Moughan, R. (2012). A guide to nutrition and hydration for active healthy lifestyles, July. UK