Teaching Specialty Language to Non-Philological Students: Key

Questions

Akhmedova Mukaddas

, Hamdam Zoda Leila

and Makhsudova Fayzillat

National University of Uzbekistan, Uzbekistan

Tashkent State University of Oriental Studies, Tashkent, Uzbekistan

Keywords: Language Competence, Communicative Learning, Language Material, General Literary Language, Speech

Style, Educational And Scientific Activity.

Abstract: This paper explores the challenges in teaching the language of specialized fields to non-philological students.

It delves into the communicative needs of students and the necessity of forming their linguistic competence.

Understanding these needs is crucial for designing effective Russian language courses that cater to practical

communication in various professional settings. The study highlights the importance of a communicative-

oriented approach in language teaching, emphasizing the development of language skills for real-life

situations. By analysing the communicative needs of students across different fields of activity, the paper

identifies key aspects to consider in curriculum design, including the selection and presentation of language

material. It argues for a system-functional approach, starting with the general literary language as the

foundation and progressively incorporating specific functional styles relevant to students' professional

contexts. This holistic approach aims to cultivate linguistic competence aligned with students' communication

requirements in their respective fields of study.

1 INTRODUCTION

The harmonious correspondence of thought and word,

speech and speech act seems to be an urgent

educational task. Understanding that language is one

of the main tools for personal development leads to

the search for effective approaches in teaching. It is

essential that the assimilable semantic and syntactic

models of utterances and their lexical components

make it possible to solve specific communicative

tasks of professional communication.

The priority of today's language teaching is to focus

on the formation of communicative competence. The

communicative dominance in language teaching

places serious demands on the content and forms of

organization of the educational process. Russian

language learning by students of non-philological

specialities has a practical orientation; it should

provide various forms of communication in Russian

both during the period of study at the university and

after graduation. "Communication is the ability of a

person to get in touch with other people and make

himself understood," says John Adair (2003).

The pragmatic goals of language learning determine

the practical, communicative orientation of the entire

learning process based on a comprehensive study of

the communicative needs of students. Identification

of students' communicative needs can be considered

as a starting point for determining the main

parameters of the course of study, including language.

Knowledge of the communicative needs of students

allows you to more accurately imagine what the

description of language material in a practical

Russian language course should be, how it should be

selected, presented and mastered in a communicative

learning environment.

As you know, one of the decisive conditions for

mastering speech is the correspondence of the level

of language competence of the student to the nature

of his speech activity. Thus, when setting limited

goals in learning the Russian language

(communication in some fairly standard situations

relevant to business people, etc.), a situational-

thematic principle of selection, organization and

presentation of language and speech material in

textbooks using appropriate teaching methods can

have a positive effect. Learning a language for the

purpose of communication in different spheres for the

implementation of broad cognitive and social

activities implies a different level of formation of

Mukaddas, A., Leila, H. and Fayzillat, M.

Teaching Specialty Language to Non-Philological Students: Key Questions.

DOI: 10.5220/0012850500003882

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 2nd Pamir Transboundary Conference for Sustainable Societies (PAMIR-2 2023), pages 383-386

ISBN: 978-989-758-723-8

383

language and speech competence, and therefore, in

this case, a different approach to the selection of

language material, a different organisation of the

entire educational process is required.

If we want to define the content of the Russian

language course in such a way that it is adequate to

the goals facing our students, then it is possible to

accomplish this task only if the speech and language

needs of students are comprehensively taken into

account. This means that the basis of all work should

be:

a) identification of the communicative needs of

students;

b) a certain scientifically and pragmatically based

description of the language system as a whole and

those functional subsystems, the choice of which is

completely determined by the communicative needs

of students.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

The study of the communicative needs of students of

non-philological universities has shown that, along

with the educational and scientific fields of activity

for non-philological students of the humanities, such

fields of activity as socio-political, socio-household

and administrative-legal are relevant.

Communicating in each of these fields of activity,

students should be able to use one or another stylistic

variety of modern Russian. Thus, in the

administrative-legal and educational-scientific fields

of activity, students will use, respectively, official

business and scientific styles of speech, and in the

social and household sphere - spoken language. When

communicating in the socio-political sphere, students

will need knowledge of the main features of the

journalistic style, and the socio-cultural sphere will

require, in particular, some familiarity with the

language of fiction. In this case, the following

problems naturally arise:

what functional styles of the modern Russian

language should be the object of study?

is it legitimate to single out the main, central one

among these styles, on the basis of which other

functional subsystems can be studied?

In fact, according to methodologists Motina (1983) &

Bitekhtina et al., (1986), the number of stylistic

varieties included in the educational process should

correspond to the number of fields of activity relevant

to this contingent of students. However, it must be

borne in mind that the communicative needs of

students in the above-mentioned fields of activity are

unequal. So, for example, the verbal needs for the

ability to write an official statement or fill out a

questionnaire (i.e. the administrative and legal field

of activity) are quite peripheral. As for the social and

household sphere, in the first-year students already

have the necessary communication skills in a

language environment. Therefore, at the main stage

of training, the communicative needs of students in

the educational, scientific, socio-political and socio-

cultural spheres of activity are important, which

dictates the expediency of highlighting the following

aspects in the teaching process as the main aspects:

"Language of specialty", "Language of journalism",

"Language of fiction". This determines the need to

include appropriate manuals in the educational

complex.

Now, regarding the second question outlined above.

It is often suggested that, unlike philology students

who require complete knowledge of the entire

language system, non-philology students, whose

main purpose of learning Russian is to receive

professional training, feel the need for fluency in only

the language of the specialty, and somewhat more

broadly, the scientific style of speech. Indeed,

communication in educational and scientific

activities is the leading need of students of the main

faculties. If we conclude that the scientific style of

speech should be the basis for studying the Russian

language for students of non-philological faculties,

then such a decision, on the one hand, does not

correspond to the communicative needs of students,

and on the other hand, contradicts the need for an

adequate representation of the system of the studied

language, and this makes it advisable to take a

different approach - Bitekhtina et al., (1986).

As Galperin (1998) wrote, "each language can be

considered as a kind of code, which is nothing more

than the norms of a literary language, and which is

divided into a number of sub-codes – functional styles.

In other words, the literary language is an alternative

to the common language system, and functional styles

– the language of fiction, the language of newspapers,

the language of scientific prose, the language of

official documents – are variants of this common

language system". If we use the terminology

proposed by Galperin (1998), it turns out that starting

language learning in the audience of humanities

students with a scientific style of speech means

starting the study of the system from one of its

variants, bypassing the center, the core of the system,

i.e. the norms of the general literary language.

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3 METHODOLOGY

We understand that the general literary language, in

contrast to the language employed in scientific and

mass media contexts, is not restricted to any specific

domain of student activity. It is utilised by our

students, as well as by any native speaker, based on

the specific circumstances across all their activities

without exception. Therefore, it is the general literary

language that is the basis for the study of linguistic

phenomena by foreign students. The core of the

educational complex for non-philological students of

the humanities is a general literary language, on the

basis of which work begins within each section, and

then the acquired skills and abilities are transferred to

other functional subsystems, which is facilitated by

working with textbooks supplementing the textbook,

which aim to develop speech skills and abilities based

on the material of texts in the specialty.

This way of studying the language system – from the

general literary language to individual functional

styles of speech that fall within the sphere of students'

communicative needs (i.e. from the core to

systemically related phenomena) seems rational and

adequate to the structure of the subject of study itself

– the language system. Having mastered the core of

the system, students naturally move on to mastering

subsystems, and this is the way to form the level of

language competence necessary for students to

communicate in Russian not only in educational and

scientific, but also in other relevant fields of activity

for them - Galskova et al., (2004).

The presentation of language material in a practical

Russian language course should reflect the nature of

the object and the pragmatic nature of the objectives

of its study. The most promising in this regard is a

system-functional approach to solving these tasks.

Focusing the entire process of teaching Russian to the

student, including textbooks, we note that there is a

significant difference between what is a language

system for a student and what is for a teacher.

As is known, in the process of forming language

competence, a student should acquire not so much

certain knowledge of the Russian language as acquire

practical language skills and abilities. This means that

students should be able to correctly build word forms,

combine them into phrases, form sentences and text.

When learning a language, a person, willingly or

unwittingly, necessarily organises his knowledge into

a certain system, which allows him to use this familiar

system as a means of communication, during which

the language material is compared, differentiated,

analysed and generalised, the choice of language

means is made depending on the conditions of

communication. The cognitive activity of the student

in connection with the study of language, due to the

system-forming nature of human thinking, turns into

a continuous and intense process of formation,

expansion and refinement of the idea of the language

system that has developed in his mind. The formation

of an idea of the language system as a functioning

system is carried out in the process of using language

for communication purposes, and at the same time,

the idea of language as a system is a condition that

allows using language as a means of communication

– Sorokin et al., (1989) – Garbovsky (1988).

4 ANALYSIS AND RESULTS

According to psychologists, the main, leading

psychological process in language acquisition is the

process of generalisation (generalisation, transfer).

To form an idea of the language system in the

student's mind, a system-functional approach to the

selection, description and presentation of language

material for educational purposes is needed. This

approach to the presentation of language material

involves:

1. An adequate description of the language

material, determined by specific goals, so

that an integrated model of the language

system can be presented in the perspective

of the entire course. To achieve this goal, it

is necessary: a) allocation of the core of the

system and systemically related phenomena;

allocation of linguistic means subject to

active and passive assimilation; b) a

systematic representation of individual

fragments and different levels of the

language system (here we mean a systematic

representation of vocabulary, morphology,

word formation, syntax, text type systems,

etc.; the representation of linguistic units is

not isolated, but in a system of their

oppositions and connections, paradigmatic

and syntagmatic. c) characteristics of

language tools in terms of their content,

structure and function.

2. Balanced and communication-oriented

introduction of language and speech

material, correlation of language material

with the possibility of performing speech

tasks in certain communication conditions,

since the formation of language competence

occurs in the process of speech activity, i.e.

in the process of using language as a means

of communication. When studying different

Teaching Specialty Language to Non-Philological Students: Key Questions

385

language tools, a projection is made of the

possibility of their use in different spheres of

communication, and especially in the field

of humanities - Bitekhtina et al., (1986).

5 CONCLUSION

In conclusion, it is imperative to consider two primary

factors when developing the linguistic competence of

philology students: their communicative needs and

the organization of the language system and its

relevant functional subsystems. The linguistic

competence required by students should align with

the volume and nature of their communicative needs

across various fields of activity. This competence can

only be achieved through a solid foundation in the

general literary language. Once students have

mastered this foundation, they can progress to

studying the specific features of language

subsystems.

The level of linguistic competence needed for

students to effectively engage in speech activities

dictates the necessity of employing a system-

functional approach to describe, select, and present

language material. This approach ensures that

language instruction is tailored to the communicative

needs of students and provides them with the skills

necessary for effective communication in their

respective fields. In essence, a comprehensive

understanding of the communicative needs of

students, coupled with a systematic approach to

language instruction, is essential for the development

of their linguistic competence and proficiency.

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