УДК 811.111:378.14 Basic principles of allying backward planning to designing an academic program for foreign language teaching to students specializing in management

Abstract

The article provides a rationale for applying the backward planning principle to designing a course of foreign language for students majoring in management. The necessity to improve the process of designing an academic program emerged due to the existing gap between the requirements to the professional qualifications of managers and the insufficient level of professional communication skills in a foreign language demonstrated by alumni of non-linguistic universities, in particular students specializing in management.

The backward principle of planning a course of foreign language involves three stages of designing a teaching program. The procedure starts with establishing the goals of learning in view of actual requirements to professional managerial activity and the state standards regulating the outcomes of training managers at universities. Theinstruction plan provided in the article focuses on four spheres of professional communication that allow to determine the learning goals: the ability to conduct a business conversation (job interview, delegating duties, control); the ability to hold a team meeting; the skills of public speaking; negotiation skills.

The second step of the procedure is compiling a set of controlling tools designed to establish whether the learning goals have been reached. The article provides forms and methods of control based on the learning goals, with focus on role-plays and student portfolios as innovative and job-oriented means of preparing students to oral and written professional communication.

The third step is designing the actual course program. The article provides an example of aligning the learning goals, language material, means and forms of control in a learning unit.

The following principles are established as the baseline for designing a course program of teaching a foreign language for professional purposes based on the backward planning paradigm: combining traditional methods with e-learning; advanced usage of information technologies and flipped classroom techniques; a shift in the role of an instructor, from the source of knowledge to the organizer of project and investigation activities; interactive learning; setting a hierarchy of goals.