Difficulties of English for Specific Purposes Teaching According to 21-St Century Skills Model in the Russian Federation

Abstract

The most general explanation of 21-st century skills model is viewed as understanding the concepts, certain core knowledge, competences helping to achieve success in life and profession. The 21-st century skills are grouped according to four categories: 1) digital literacy (research and technology; ability to get, process and analyze data, form and visualize information; cross-cultural awareness and competence); 2) innovative thinking (adaptability, reactivity, self-organization, curiosity, creative potential, ability to take risks, orderly thinking, analytical skills); 3) effective communication (team-building and leadership in a group, participative work, interpersonal communication, social and civil responsibility, interaction, i.e. learning and working via mutual development); 4) high performance (ability to prioritize, planning and control, effective resources use, ability to create qualitative outcome of one’s labor). 21-st century skills model in linguo-didactics means formation of the multimodal communicative competence. The world is changing rapidly, new competences and even professions become necessary, and some of them converge different fields of knowledge. Thus, Agency of strategic initiatives and Moscow school of management “Skolkovo” presented “Atlas of new professions”, comprising 140 new professions in 19 fields (among them there are 10 new trends in the sphere of Pedagogy: moderator, tutor, project manager, coordinator of on-line educational platform, game-master, game-educator and others). The essence of the innovative activity of the higher educational institutions is training of highly-educated human resources for the innovating economy. Such activity is achievable only under the conditions of introduction of new elements, characteristics and properties, necessary for the demands of the information society. The most complex ESP course is implemented in Medical Universities. Medical English teaching is a very specific job and it is determined by four basic principles: diversification, multilevel approach, interdisciplinary methodology, context-oriented exercises and problem-solving activities. Complexity of the material, difficulty of the medical work demanding deep understanding of different aspects of the doctor’s daily routine (terminology, concepts, procedures) make the teaching process time-consuming and require concentration. Lecturers must have expert knowledge of professional context (Medical terminology) and cooperate with native speakers.