The main types of individual work for students of non-linguistics departments

Abstract

Students’ individual work is a necessary component of the educational process and allows training specialists who are able to think creatively, make quick decisions when solving unusual situations, individually plan and analyze their own actions. At the same time, for its efficient organization, it is necessary to choose the proper types of individual work that meet the educational goals and fit the level of students’ knowledge. So, the article focuses on summarizing types of individual work of students of non-linguistic departments while studying English. The approaches of scientists to determine the essence of individual work have been provided (a component of the learning process which is the work that is performed in a specially designated time without the direct teacher’s assistance, but assigned and supervised by the teacher. Individual work is also defined as management of students’ cognitive activity by the teacher by means of guidelines, conversations, colloquia, consultations in classes). The main goals of students’ individual work have been defined (formation of ability to use special documentation and literature, development of students’ cognitive abilities and activity, acquisition of skills of solving practical problems, formation of independent thinking, self-development, self-improvement and self-fulfillment). The main types of individual work for students of non-linguistic departments have been summarized (individual work on the model; constructive and variable individual work; heuristic individual work; research individual work) and tasks for students of non-linguistic specialties have been provided with the relevant examples. It has been established that individual work on the model should be offered to the students immediately after introducing new material, individual work of constructive and variable type includes the preparation of reports on certain topics according to the scheme offered by the teacher as well as preparation of abstracts in English, use of new lexical or grammatical material in oral speech after its introducing and practicing with the teacher, etc. Heuristic work teaches to individually formulate a learning task and develop a plan for its solution. At this level there is a deeper understanding of phenomena and all kinds of processes and creative activity begins. Continuation of heuristic individual work is the students’ research work where they do not use anymore the model suggested by the teacher; instead, they are encouraged to think critically, their activities become of research nature. This type of individual work is used to prepare students for presentations of their scientific papers at conferences.