Effective Techniques of Teaching Foreign Languages to Bachelor Students under Distance Learning Conditions

Abstract

Introduction: Modern reality gave human civilization a new challenge – the COVID-19 pandemic. Under these circumstances, distance learning has become the only opportunity to maintain an uninterrupted educational process. The authors share their experience of increasing productivity at foreign languages classes through applying their original techniques. Materials and methods: In their research, the authors used the following theoretical, empirical and mathematical methods: studying the literary sources accumulated by the Russian and foreign scientific communities; observing; survey; interpreting statistical data; building graphs. Results: Following the traditional guidelines in teaching a foreign language – comprehensive listening, speaking, reading, and writing – the authors tried to adjust the conventional methods to distance learning conditions. The aim was to reduce costs caused by the lack of face-to-face contact, ant to enjoy the advantages of students’ continuous access to the Internet resources. Having analyzed their experience gained from April, 2020, to May, 2021, the authors came to the conclusion that the most tangible results had been gained through practicing such techniques as “chain retelling”, “mute listening”, “cross dialogue”, and “analytical review of modern scientific content”. While the former three helped to mostly sharpen students’ comprehensive listening and speaking skills at practical classes, the latter was of special value by teaching theoretical linguistic disciplines. Such original approach to working with scientific literature gives Bachelor students a favourable chance to use the information from the shared bank for conducting their further research at all university levels. Conclusions: The proposed techniques have been tested in four leading Russian Universities, namely: Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, Moscow City University, Moscow Financial and Industrial University “Synergy”. The aspects improved are reflected in the graph compiled based on the students’ survey results.