BLENDED LEARNING IN DEVELOPING PROFESSIONAL ENGLISH COMMUNICATION SKILLS OF PROSPECTIVE SOCIAL WORKERS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25128/2415-3605.21.1.7Keywords:
prospective social workers, blended learning, English communication skills, web-technologiesAbstract
The article provides the rationale for the development of professional English communication skills of prospective social workers through blended learning, analyzes and grounds the peculiarities of blended learning aimed at developing communication skills. On the basis of the survey conducted among lecturers and social workers common intercultural situations have been determined. It is concluded that effective intercultural communication requires knowledge, lexical, phonetic and grammar skills, skills of spoken production and spoken interaction, linguo-sociocultural skills. The requirements to the level of prospective social workers’ English communication skills have been specified. It is concluded that blended learning should be a mixture of both concept based learning and collaboration-oriented learning with the face-to-face mode as the lead one; must be based on learner-centered and professional approaches, correspond to the determined principles (combination of face-to-face (approximately 65–70 %) and online (about 30-35 %) learning; students’ collaboration both online and face-to-face; students’ active involvement; effective communication between students as well as students and teachers; flexibility; regular and prompt feedback; personalization of the online environment); should involve different types of instructional Web-based technologies; incorporate various methods and techniques; focus on different types of tasks and activities including professional problem-based tasks; use different types and instruments of assessment (teacher assessment, computer marked assessment (e.g., testing vocabulary), peer assessment, self-assessment).
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