Practitioner of EEL for Non-English Major Undergraduates: Specific Professional Needs

Abstract

The paper deals with the problem of forming the methodological competence of a prospective practitioner of EFL for non-English major undergraduates. Foreign language learning environments training English and non-English majors have been comparatively analysed from the point of view of the teaching objective, result, content, process and resources. On the basis of the analysis, specific professional needs of a practitioner of EFL for non-English majors have been singled out. They encompass such components of the practitioner’s professional activity as research, designing, organizing, self-education, and collaboration. Research and designing include students’ educational and job-related needs investigation, academic and professional discourse analysis, teaching objective specification, teaching content selection, course syllabus development, teaching materials selection, adaptation and development. Organizing focuses on the application of the functional approach to EFL acquisition, computer-assisted learning, distance learning, blended learning, content and language integrated learning (CLIL), role plays, business games, simulations, differentiation strategies in the groups with the heterogeneous input level of the students’ intercultural communicative competence and low level of motivation to foreign language learning. Self-education presupposes developing a positive attitude to the students’ field, monitoring the latest news and achievements in it, mastering the basics of the students’ major, its terminology, genre and discourse peculiarities. Collaboration includes cooperation with students, readiness to be corrected by them when a solecism in the subject is made by the practitioner and collaboration with a teacher of the students’ major while selecting the teaching content, designing the course and in team teaching. The singled out peculiarities are to be taken into consideration while designing the structure of the methodological competence of a practitioner of EFL for non-English major undergraduates.