Articles editing as means of developing editors’ professional competence while teaching English for academic writing

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Articles editing as means of developing editors' professional competence while teaching English for academic writing

Gorodnycha L., Olkhovyk M.

Chernihiv, T.H. Shevchenko National University

Abstract

Introduction The authors focus on the important higher education methodological problems, considering the peculiarities of teaching Academic writing in a foreign language to the students of non-linguistic specialties.

The article highlights the main approaches to the methodology of teaching foreign language for professional communication and focuses on the existence of a certain methodological problem regarding the specificity of teaching process. The authors propose a holistic view of the place of a foreign language in the prospective specialists' professional training. Purpose. To analyze given curriculum outcomes of prospective editors and propose specific ones concerning the peculiarities of English for academic writing; to reveal the lack of methodologies in formation and development future editors' professional competence; to give hate of speech classification as a phenomenon of the modern informational space; to suggest the exercises for developing professional competence through the editing of articles containing hate speech. Methods. Reviewing the studies on methodological problems of prospective editors' professional competence formation, considering the peculiarities of teaching process with the view to analyzing existing scientific approaches and to developing the exercises. Results. The peculiarities of a modern educational curriculum in editor education are studied, and that requires from a prospective specialist not only a higher level of communicative competence, but a complete integration of the individual into the European linguistic environment with the opportunities to apply professional skills and abilities. The study suggests the development of the methodology of teaching a foreign language based on the development of professional competencies required by the educational standards of a particular specialty. So, proceeding from fact that the prospective editor of educational publications should have skills in immediate work on texts, media texts, informational messages, the article offers the exercises which are based on the peculiarities of editing texts containing the hate of speech, which is presented as a vivid example of manipulative technologies of the media space, and requires detailed research and comprehension on the textual, psychological, socio-cultural levels and should be included in the standards learning outcomes of prospective editors. Conclusion. The suggested exercises will help to develop prospective editors' professional competence as a part of English for academic writing and prepare them for writing their own articles.

Key words: professional communicative competence, foreign language for specific purposes, English for academic writing, editor education, media text, hate speech, article editing.

language teaching academic writing

Городнича Л. В., Ольховик М. В.

Чернігів, Національний університет “Чернігівський колегіум” імені Т. Г. Шевченка

Анотація

Проблема якості фахової підготовки у вищій школі, методики цієї підготовки, співвідношення теоретичних дисциплін і практичної підготовки магістрів, місце іноземної мови в освітніх програмах, програмні результати навчання - усе це, безперечно, носить міждисциплінарний характер і повинно висвітлюватися з точки зору мовознавства, текстології, педагогічних наук, в тому числі методики викладання іноземних мов. Автори звертаються до актуальних методичних проблем сучасної вищої школи, розглядаючи специфіку викладання курсу “Основи академічного письма іноземною мовою”. Дослідження орієнтоване на вивчення особливостей фахової підготовки студентів-філологів, які додатково отримують кваліфікацію “редактора освітніх видань” у межах освітньо-професійної програми магістра, вчителя української мови і літератури. У статті описується місце іноземної мови у фаховій підготовці майбутніх редакторів з вивченням особливостей сучасної освітньої програми навчання, що вимагає від майбутніх спеціалістів не лише високого рівня комунікативної компетентності, але й цілковитої інтеграції особистості в європейське мовне середовище з можливостями застосування фахових навичок і вмінь. Автори аналізують програмні вимоги щодо рівня сформованості професійної компетентності майбутніх спеціалістів у межах курсу, акцентуючи увагу на недостатній розробленості методик формування описаної компетентності. Так, виходячи з того, що майбутній філолог-редактор повинен володіти навичками безпосередньої роботи з текстами, медіатекстами та інформаційними повідомленнями, представлено вправи для курсу англійської мови для вказаної спеціальності, що ґрунтується на особливостях редагування текстів з мовою ворожнечі, яка наводиться як яскравий приклад маніпулятивних технологій медійного простору, а тому повинна бути включена до результатів навчання майбутніх редакторів. Представлені вправи допоможуть вдосконалити професійну компетентність майбутніх редакторів освітніх видань та підготують їх до написання власних статей.

Ключові слова: професійна компетентність, іноземна мова, немовні спеціальності, академічне письмо, навчання редакторів, медіа-текст, мова ненависті, редагування.

Городничая Л.В., Ольховик М.В.

Редактирование англоязычных статей как прием развития профессиональной компетентности будущих редакторов в курсе "Основы академического письма"

Авторы обращаются к актуальным методическим проблемам современной высшей школы, рассматривая специфику преподавания курса “Основы академического письма”. В статье описывается место иностранного языка в профессиональной подготовке будущего специалиста с изучением особенностей современной образовательной программы подготовки филологов-редакторов, которая требует от будущего специалиста не просто высокого уровня коммуникативной компетентности, а полной интеграции личности в европейскую языковую среду с возможностями использования профессиональных навыков и умений. В частности, исходя из того, что филолог-редактор должен владеть навыками непосредственной работы с текстами, медиатекстами и информационными сообщениями, в статье представлены упражнения для курса английского языка для неязыковых специальностей, основанные на особенностях редактирования текстов с языком ненависти, которая приводится как яркий пример манипулятивных технологий медийного пространства, а поэтому должна быть включена в результаты обучения будущих редакторов. Ключевые слова: профессиональная компетентность, иностранный язык, неязыковые специальности, академическое письмо, обучение редакторов, медиатекст, язык ненависти, редактирование.

Introduction

With the adoption of the Law of Ukraine “About Higher Education” in 2004, significant reforms in the system of teaching professionals of all specialties has begun, in particular, the changes to the system of standards for higher education appeared. The last year's Law of Ukraine “About Education”, as well as the proposed draft Concept of Pedagogical Education Development, confirm the necessity of qualitative changes in the methodological programmes of higher school. Moreover, the comprehensive support for the foreign languages studying at the state level has determined the renovation of teaching foreign language for specific purposes in the context of vocational training as one of the main methodological problems.

The topicality of this research is related to holistic view of the role of a foreign language in the prospective specialists' professional training, because the detailed consideration of the draft higher education standards proposed by Ministry of Ukraine confirms the traditional understanding of the role of a foreign language as professional competence, while the needs of modern society require not only a high level of communicative competence, but the complete integration of the personality in the European linguistic environment with the possibilities of applying professional skills and abilities.

Methods

The theoretical and practical features of editor education, the theory of editing and editorial analysis and editing are thoroughly investigated by Western (R. Derycur, L.T. Sharp, I. Hanter, H. Boetius) and Ukrainian scholars (N. Zelinska, V Rizun, Z. Partico, I. Pobidash, M.Tymoshyk, M. Feller), peculiarities of editorial education are studied by S. Fiialka, G. Onkovych, O. Baliun. Also one should mention the study of the translated texts editing, scientific literature in particular (V. Gubarets, N. Myronyuk, O. Rebrii, M. Zarytsky, etc.)

Actually the empirical part of the research is based on the study, revealing features of future specialists' editorial work with such modern media phenomenon as the hate speech. M. Butkevich, A. Weber, O. Verkhovsky, G. Kokazhevnikova concern theoretical aspects of the study of this phenomenon, in particular, the classification. The methodology of foreign language for specific purposes is a part of the theoretical research of such scholars as L. Mazunova, I. Galperin, O. Tarnopolsky, D. Byrne, J.C. Eisterhold, V. Evans, T. Hedge, T. Hutchinson, C. Tribble.

The aim of the article is to suggest the methodology of professional competence formation of non-linguistic specialties through the improvement of the future editors' of educational publications professional skills and abilities by means of a foreign language.

The research is focused on the study of the peculiarities of the professional philologists' training, who additionally receive the qualification of “editors of educational publications” within the framework of the educational and professional curriculum of the master's degree, lecturer of Ukrainian language and literature. The problem of the quality of professional training in higher education, the methodology of this training, the ratio of theoretical disciplines and the practical training of masters, the place of a foreign language in educational programmes, curriculum outcomes of the studies are undoubtedly interdisciplinary and should be considered in terms of linguistics, textology, pedagogical sciences, including methods of teaching foreign languages, methodological theories of professional orientation (in this case, editology), etc.

The objectives of this investigation are the following:

• to analyze given curriculum outcomes of prospective editors and propose specific ones concerning the peculiarities of English for academic writing;

• to reveal the lack of methodologies in formation and development of prospective editors' professional competence;

• to give hate speech classification as a phenomenon of the modern informational space;

• to suggest the set of exercises for developing professional competence through the editing of articles containing hate speech.

Results and discussion

Today it is possible to state the existence of a certain methodological problem concerning the specificity of teaching foreign languages. It is a question of the fact that with a qualitatively different content of teaching foreign language as a general academic discipline and a professionally oriented foreign language, the processes of studying and language learning processes in fact remain similar. Scientists emphasize on the lack of language teaching methods for specific purposes that could not be used in the overall learning process. Especially, T. Hutchinson, A. Waters, R. Jordan, D. Brinton came to the conclusion that the course of teaching a professionally oriented foreign language has to use the methodology and techniques of the disciplines that it serves. “That is, the question of how to combine traditional and special methods and approaches in organizing the course of foreign language for specific purposes remains open” (Гіренко, 2011, с. 132).

The peculiarity of English for specific purposes lies in the professional context of the chosen specialty, the main actual task of which is to gain the knowledge of the professional terminology system and to acquire skills to use highly specialized vocabulary for the accomplishment of training professionally oriented tasks aimed at further communication in situations which can appear at work.

The main objective of teaching foreign languages to students of non-linguistic specialties is to develop their professionally oriented communicative competence. The National ESP Curriculum for Universities was designed to specify the overall aim of ESP teaching and learning. There are the requirements for academic writing skills, which state that students should be able to write texts and documents in English for variety of purposes related to professional areas (Бакаєва та ін., 2005, с. 37).

The basic principles of teaching a foreign language of professional communication should include a communicative approach, a special professional approach, autonomous learning, etc. However, as the analysis of scientific works confirms, despite the fact, that the content of teaching a foreign language, which is taught as a general academic discipline and the content of teaching a professionally oriented course, are different, the processes of organizing language learning in the professionally oriented course are the same as in general education. In other words, there are no language teaching methods for special purposes that are not used in language learning in general. On the other hand, teaching foreign language for specific purposes has to use the methodology and methods of the disciplines it serves.

Consequently, the traditional view is that there is no doubt about the importance of learning and understanding oral and written professionally oriented speech. This is defined as the main purpose of professional language courses of a foreign language not only for technical specialties, but for any specialized training (e.g. professional vocabulary).

In our opinion, this approach expels the process of a learning foreign language from the general conception of educational and professional specialist's training. First of all, it is about shifting the emphasis from focusing the learning process on the acquisition of professional vocabulary to the use of all methods and methods of teaching a foreign language in the standards results of learning a specialty. This is not only about European-wide recommendations for mastering a commonly- used and a professionally oriented foreign language, but mainly about the reintegration of a foreign language competence into the structure of professional competencies of a particular specialty and educational-professional curriculum.

Thus, the study of a foreign language in higher school in educational curriculum of the second level of training should take into account, first of all, the professional component of the educational process, focusing solely on the specialization of prospective specialists. It is not just about interdisciplinary consideration in the construction of the curriculum of most courses, in particular, the discipline “Fundamentals of scientific research in a foreign language”, but also about the integration of the process of teaching foreign languages into the sphere of particular student's professional interests. In our view, learning a foreign language should be based on the core competencies required by the educational programme of a particular specialty. Specialty “Ukrainian language and literature. Editor of educational publications” requires a student to form a whole range of professional skills and abilities along with integrated and general competencies.

The editor educational standards results, in particular, relate to the skills and abilities that are directly connected with the work on texts, media texts and informational messages. The teaching of editorial analysis and text correction is based on the multi-dimensional awareness of the functioning of the text. Future editors of educational publications must gain knowledge of the mechanism and general structure of the editorial analysis of the text, be able to assess the authenticity of the factual material and edit accordingly, find resources to check the available factual material. It is important to develop the skills of independent search and selection of scientific material and its comprehension, the skill of analyzing the logical foundations of the text and compositional techniques, the ability to use scientific, educational, reference, periodical literature, to comprehend the obtained information in order to master the methods of conducting research work; mastering the skills of developing tools for a particular research, self-editorial analysis; qualified transformation of various types of texts (change of style, genre, purpose of the text, etc.), including the creation of new texts on the basis of the transformed text, creation, editing and referencing of journalistic texts, analytical reviews and essays; mastering the methods and skills of stylistic editing of the text keeping its individual and authorial peculiarities unchanged.

The basic curriculum learning results of prospective editors include the ability to create a media text and media reports and analyze them accordingly to semantic and structural criteria; the ability to build informational communication in a professional and non-professional circle, taking into account the social and cultural context. From this perspective, it is becoming increasingly important to study the originality of the process of editing actual media texts, which are mostly not of good quality and contain hidden or existing manipulations to the recipient.

We consider the hate speech as an actual phenomenon of the modern informational space, the variety of which makes it the subject of study at the interdisciplinary level. In relation to the theory of editing, today the speech of hate is a vivid example of manipulative technologies of the media space that requires detailed research and understanding of the problem at the textual, psychological, social and cultural levels and should be included in the curriculum outcomes of the prospective editors' teaching.

The phenomenon of hate speech is not completely defined by modern scientific discourse yet, but in general context, it is a statement addressed to ethnic, confessional, cultural or particular social groups or specific individuals who use, support, convey or justify aggression, violence, discrimination and other forms of hatred and these statements are specified in appropriate terms, which lead to the emergence of hatred and hostility.

The editorial study of this phenomenon is complicated by the fact that the ascertainment of facts that can be described as “the hate speech” is not axiomatic. Such statements do not obviously contain expressions that show “hatred” or negative emotions to someone, they may also depend on cultural stereotypes. So the same statement for someone can be a compliment, and for another will be an insult. This feature imposes difficulty for students of Master's degree in working methods development to discover the speech of hate in specific texts. And one of the future editors' of educational publications key skills is the ability to recognize the element of hate speech in texts and paraphrase it. While doing that you should remind your students that an effective paraphrase usually:

• has a different structure to the original;

• has mainly different vocabulary;

• retains the same meaning;

• keeps some phrases from the original that are in common use.

The speech of hate is united with the right of a citizen for freedom of speech and thought, but also it is contrary to the prohibition of discrimination and the right for privacy and private life. Moreover, the speech of hate does not contain clear criteria for delimiting the terms of hostility. This speech may be disguised in statements that may appear to the recipient to be rational and appropriate (Hoibachova, 2013, p.10). This, in its turn, requires from a teacher to develop such a system of exercises that would avoid ambiguity in the interpretation of tasks, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, allow more opportunities to use the detection of speech of hate for educational purposes.

It is important to identify those media texts where speech of hate is often used in order to determine clear criteria for developing the methodology of using foreign languages in the curriculum outcomes of prospective editors. The scientists often find tough manifestations of this type of speech among journalistic texts of expressive-journalistic and reportage varieties. Such varieties as informative- analytical and informative-expressive contain mostly middle and soft hate speech.

The formation of a set of exercises for editing the texts in a foreign language with the speech of hate should take into account the existing classifications of this phenomenon. There are lots of classifications of hate speech. Students should be familiar with these classifications before editing texts both in the course of editorial analysis, and in the course of academic writing in foreign language.

The following classification of hate speech can be used to develop the methodology:

1) Tough speech of hate:

• indirect encouragement to hostility and aggression;

• general slogans as a call for discrimination;

• direct and hidden calls for violence.

2) Medium speech of hate:

• expressions that question the well-known cases of discrimination and hatred;

• statements that claim criminal offences, the predominate of material wealth, connection with the authorities of a certain ethnic or confessional group;

• statements in which a certain group of people is accused of changing the boundaries of national self-determination and negative influence on society, power structures.

3) Soft speech of hate:

• contemptuous attitude to a ethnic or religious group;

• confirmation of limitations, disadvantages of a certain ethnic or religious group;

• the offence or humiliation of an ethnic or religious group or particular individuals who are the members of it.

Thus, generalizing, it is possible to focus on such variety of hate speech as hostility directed at ethnic, religious and cultural groups, racial, gender, age, intellectual, sexual and other forms of hatred.

The main directions of the hate speech are distinguished:

• against politicians;

• against people with other views (in the national media these are Ukrainian nationalists, supporters or opponents of communist ideology);

• against representatives of other nationalities and national minorities (the most commonly discriminated nationalities are Jews, Roma);

• against representatives of other religious of Ukraine;

• against representatives of other races and religions (Жаботинская, 2014, сс. 42-43).

Consequently, we have identified the writing skills and abilities that students have to obtain in order to successfully pursue their professional activities in future, in particular, to edit articles with elements of hate speech. The next step is the development of exercises for the formation and improvement of the described skills.

Before students independently carry out hate speech recognition and article editing exercises, they are offered examples of possible words and phrases with explanations. Here is a vivid example. The term prostitute is a portmanteau of press and prostitute and according to urban dictionary, which is the reference site for all new slang, the word has been created by American trend forecaster Gerald Celente to refer to journalists that have a clear bias in their reportage.

The methodology of writing articles in a foreign language should be organized in several stages according to the following scheme: pre-writing, writing, after-writing. In this case, we will consider exercises for the first stage, where there is not only genre analysis of the text and its structure, but also the work aimed at preparing for writing articles, namely the process of editing.

A specific feature is also that stylistic skills, abilities to stick to the required standard of design, and the ability to express thoughts in writing are developed in the exercises for teaching of articles editing.

This description of the exercises requires that students should be familiar with how the native speakers achieve their communicative goals through the construction of texts and even paragraphs in terms of ways of describing the basic information. This also applies to a careful analysis of the communicative goals of the information and compositional structure of articles, that characterize exactly that community while using speech of hate. Thus, before writing articles it is necessary to conduct a thorough genre analysis of such types of texts with their linguistic peculiarities.

The article is characterized by the following structure and compositional-genre features: introduction, main part and conclusions. But they are preceded by a title that attracts the attention of the reader first of all. Therefore, developing exercises, we should remember that speech of hate may already be present in it. The article may show a combination of description, message, reflection, in which elements of calls for discrimination, violence, or scornful attitudes towards a particular ethnic or religious group are hidden.

Therefore, the main goal of the suggested exercises is to improve the future editors' professional written skills with examples of the articles containing speech of hate. During the development of exercises, we have used sites of such periodicals as The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Times, The Independent, The Telegraph.

Exercise 1. Here you have the article titles. Determine the hate speech in this article. Paraphrase them if necessary.

• Denial of the Holocaust

• Promotion of violence against gays and separatism

• Mamie Johnson, Trailblazer in the Negro Leagues, Dies at 82

• Black Colleges Swept Up in For-Profit Crackdown Find Relief From DeVos

• H&M Apologies for Monkey Hoodie Ad Slammed as Racist

Exercise 2. Here you can see the images of people or events, which can initiate hate speech. Find and write down possible examples of hate speech for each of them.

Exercise 3. Your chief editor has given you a task to analyze the websites of the newspapers and write down the words of hate speech in one column, and in the other column offer words-substitutes.

Exercise 4. You can see the parts of the articles. Write down the words of hate speech from the text. Explain to which group they can be applied.

“The truth is that whites create superior societies. Not only are others not capable of creating what we do, most of them are not even capable of maintaining it. The one major exception would be Northeast Asians, the only other large group of people on this planet apart from Europeans capable of sustaining a technologically sophisticated society. If anybody replaces us as the world's leading civilization it will be them, for the simple reason that they are the only ones who possess a genetic intelligence to mach ours, and they are not suicidal.”

“And the rules of our region consider American and Europe to be friends and allies, and also consider the Mujahid groups fighting the Crusaders in Iraq and Afghanistan to be terrorist groups, so how can there possibly be dialogue and understanding with them without weapons?”

“I will punish all females for the crime of depriving me of sex. They have starved me of sex for my entire youth, and gave the pleasure to other men. In doing so, they took many years of my life away. I cannot kill every single female on earth, but I can deliver a devastating blow that will shake all of them to the core of their wicked hearts.”

“Can't understand why it should be a problem to get rid of all the rapes I Oslo and Norway... You just have to stop everybody at Norway's border and send all the monkeys back to Africa where they can tend to their fucking great culture (as some people say). The worst is that there are women in Norway who think African apes are sooooooo fine”.

“Is it not also curious that when white males are young and vigorous, they attempt to master the large brown balls, but as they become older and wiser, they psychologically resign themselves to their inability to master the large brown balls? Their focus shifts masochistically to hitting the tiny white golf balls in disgust and resignation - in full final realization of white genetic recisiveness.”

“The only kind people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”

“You forgot to mention just how smart the jews are, next they will make a deadly virus to kill ALL people BUT the jews!!”

Exercise 5. You are an editor of a journal. An important event took place in the public life of your city. One of your journalists wrote an article devoted to this event. But you, as the editor, have noticed the frequent use of the hate speech. Your task is to rewrite the article, changing the cases of the hate speech in neutral.

Conclusions

So, after analyzing the peculiarities of hate speech concept in the communicative space, finding out its negative potential in national mass media, describing the peculiarities of editing media texts with speech of hate, defining the principles of editor's work in the processes of neutralizing these words in modern media, we determined the editorial analysis originality of the linguistic aspect of hate speech functioning in new media. The suggested exercises will help to develop prospective editors' professional competence as a part of English for academic writing and prepare them for writing their own articles.

Our future research is intended to concentrate on investigating, evaluating and implementing new approaches of teaching English for academic writing in accordance with the requirements for editors' qualifications.

Literature

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