The use of intensive technologies in English language learning process

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The use of intensive technologies in English language learning process

Oksana Ivantsova,

Ph.D. in pedagogy,

Abstract

online training officer cadet

Along with technological advances, related learning technologies have also evolved, from simple forms of material distribution to more complex tools for communication, knowledge sharing, or forums. This rapid shifting of learning technologies raises the question of whether postsecondary education institutions are focused on keeping up with the changes rather than examining them for best practices and investigating the affect of these changes on instructors and learners.

Military education is a complex field subject to multiple pressures and competing agendas. One-size-fits-all recommendations are thus unlikely to satisfy anyone. However, a number of points are worth stressing. At a time when armed forces insist that uncertainty is a dominating feature of future operations, education - in the truest sense of the word - has never been more important for modern militaries than it is today. As such, debate about how best to deliver that education is healthy and beneficial, and all of those involved in professional military education ought to be proactively seeking opportunities for improvement and, if necessary, change.

The chances of getting in high quality educators who can offer constructive but critical new viewpoints is thus vastly increased by looking to the civilian sector, and by constituting faculties overwhelmingly from people who have dedicated their careers to teaching and research.

If modern militaries do value the educational outcomes their leaders espouse, what is necessary is greater investment in officers' development in a holistic sense, and greater trust that their students will engage with and benefit from education outside of a purely military curriculum. Opportunities for such education could be provided at higher education establishments, through online learning, blended learning or a combination of the above.

Two of the most important roles of education are to help students learn how to think, not what to think, and appreciate that learning is a lifetime activity.

Key words: learning technologies, dynamic processes, intensive training, military education, intensification.

Анотація

Іванцова Оксана Петрівна,

кандидат педагогічних наук,

Житомирський військовий інститут ім. С.П. Корольова

Використання інтенсивних технологій у процесі вивчення англійської мови

Поряд із технологічним прогресом розвинулися також технології навчання, від простих форм розповсюдження матеріалів до складніших засобів спілкування, обміну знаннями або форумів.

На сьогоднішній день необхідні більші інвестиції для підготовки майбутніх офіцерів у цілісному розумінні та більша довіра, що курсанти будуть залучатися до різноманітних освітніх діяльностей та отримувати додаткові уміння та навички за межами суто військової програми. Можливості такої освіти можуть бути надані у вищих навчальних закладах через онлайн-навчання, змішане навчання або комбінацію вищезазначеного.

Дві найважливіші ролі сучасної освіти - допомогти курсантам навчитися думати і розуміти, що навчання є життєво важливою діяльністю та такою, що відбувається протягом усього життя.

Ключові слова: інтенсифікація, онлайн навчання, дистанційне навчання, технології.

Main part

In the context of reforming the Armed Forces of Ukraine, there is an urgent need to review the approaches to determining the level of education and qualification of specialists for the organization of the educational process in educational institutions. Military education in the current situation requires the intensification of the educational process by introducing new learning technologies and methods of teaching.

An important component of Ukraine's foreign policy is a further deep military cooperation with international organizations, including the United Nations (UN), European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), where English is used as the main working language. In this context, the role of comprehensive language training of Ukrainian soldiers and their knowledge of military and business English, which is one of the main priorities in achieving interoperability of the parts and the Armed Forces of Ukraine during multinational exercises, peacekeeping, counter-terrorism and search and rescue operations under the auspices of international organizations, increases.

Improving the quality of training in high-tech professions involves mastering at least one foreign language. Learning English by the officers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is aimed at each of them achieving a certain standardized language level according to the concept of language training of the personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Dynamic processes occurring in the area of military activity, puts into first place the time factor that is needed for training to a specific educational qualification level and, the cost factor of specialist preparation, namely the effectiveness of cadet training.

The rapid growth of scientific information that has to be learned at different levels is one of the universally recognized scientific and technical features of social progress of the second half of the twentieth century. Nowadays it is known, that the quantity of world information doubles every 10-15 years. Scientists stress the fact that every minute about 2 thousand pages of scientific text is published in the world, annually about 7 billion pages of printed text are issued; a scientist must spend about 17 years of life mastering the scientific literature published per year. Moreover, in recent years we have moved from a shortage of information to its saturation. According to Eric Schmidt, every two days mankind creates as much information as was produced from the beginning of our civilization until 2013. It's about five exabytes of information per day. Today we need help in navigating to find the information that we seek.

Based on the foregoing, we can identify the following contradictions in the educational process:

1. The contradictions between the new needs and aspirations of the individual with level of the tools' mastery necessary to meet them.

2. The contradictions between the new cognitive goals, objectives and available means of action, and new situations and previous experience of the individual, and between established generalizations and new facts.

3. The contradiction between the daily intake of large amounts of information and familiar brain ability to perceive and remember information, imperfections of psychophysical development of a person.

4. The contradiction between usual workload, and training in conditions of high information and psychological stress with a deficit of study time.

The purpose of learning a foreign language in high school at the present stage is the mastery by the cadets of the communicative competences that will implement their knowledge and, skills for solving specific communication problems in real - life situations. Foreign language serves as a means of communication, dialogue with other nations and is a vital necessity. Cadets should be trained using modern, authentic educational materials for the use of foreign languages in later life and career. The purpose of teaching is to study the lexical, grammatical, morphological and stylistic fundamentals of the English language together with the achievements of the cadets' abilities to perform professional-oriented speech activity in the four main activities - Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing. The planned outcome study: 2800-3400 lexical units of combined every day and military English; grammar rules to the extent necessary for communication, reading and writing in a foreign language; and the rules of military literature translation. To form general (professional, military, professional, special, etc.) competencies while studying to gain such competences, as follows:

Written communication:

• correspondence;

• resume writing.

Oral communication:

• participation in the discussion;

• rules of greetings and polite conversation;

• sharing information over the phone;

• exchange of views;

Social and cultural competence:

• work in a multicultural environment.

Among the topical issues is language training for professionals of the higher military school view the revision of educational programs towards dynamic compression for intensifying the language training of cadets; bringing the learning content according to the military experts' experience in combat and in the operational training of their troops, their use in peacekeeping missions, local conflicts and wars; searching for new teaching methods to improve the speed and quality of memorizing information; refurbishment of educational facilities; increasing the resources for motivational training activities. The intensification of the educational process, with its heavy load of information and psycho-physiological tensions, refers to improving the efficiency of learning, not simply by increasing labor costs, time, teachers and cadets, and financial resources, which is typical for extensive development, but primarily due to their more efficient use and creation of favorable conditions and the perception of educational material. It provides a full and reasonable use of the achievements of pedagogy and psychology, sociology and other sciences. The aim of intensifying training in higher military school - through the integrated use of the most effective forms, methods and means of teaching and the organization of close cooperation between them, is to ensure that it better meets modern requirements to practise military training to highly qualified specialists.

Intensive training is based on the consistent use of various learning activities that provide a gradual increase in levels of assimilation of educational information from the level of «readiness» through to the levels of «recognition», «reproduction», «application» to «creativity». The main ones are: the formation of study groups on the results of test performance, rapid reading, note-taking at various levels of communication, role communicative games, competitions and collective creativity. These techniques of intensive training in humanities have a continuity of traditional methods, as for all stages of learning using conventional teaching materials for traditional courses.

Unlike traditional teaching, intensive training includes a number of new types of training activities aimed at self-improvement and the harmonious development of the cadet's personality. Independent work requires the ability to overcome physiological barriers using techniques of psycho-selfregulation, and include such kinds of educational activities as dynamic reading, rational methods of working with texts, participating in role-playing games, competitions and more.

In the context of intensification of the learning process the overcoming of barriers happens and it needs a special psycho - physiological situation that mobilizes the body to overcome them. This creates information «overload» in conjunction with simultaneous psychological compensation, in game form, in a suggestive emotional «relief.» Thus, the most informative stimulation allows the subconscious to download large amounts of information.

Our aim is to search known tends of intensifying education at high information and psychological tension. While analyzing the possibilities of increasing the intensity of perception of new material we cannot pay attention to distance education, blended learning, open learning and boundary-crossing learning.

The results of the literature review are organized to first present emerging approaches, second to consider learners and educators, and third and the fourth to focus on education in the military.

Changes to Distance Education with the Emergence of Technology

With the emergence of learning technologies, traditional paper-based courses were either supplemented by or evolved into other forms of learning defined as e-learning, online, or web-based learning. E-learning refers to the use of multimedia technologies and the Internet to improve the quality of learning by facilitating access to resources and services as well as exchanges and remote collaboration [3, 5]. E-leaming has resulted in more people accessing higher education and has subsequently influenced societies around the world [10, p. 8]. The discussion of specific Internet-based devices and their possibility to offer learning situations virtually anywhere has shifted to exploring the emerging web technologies that are used on such devices [1, 5]. Abrami, Bernard, Bures, Borokhovski and Tamim (2011) argue that as a result of the emerging technologies, «distance education and online learning have evolved beyond simple comparisons with classroom instruction» [2, p. 82-103]. They contend that emerging technologies have the power to create interactions that are «guided, focused, and purposeful» and to enable learners to interact via technology in more complex ways through different forms of communication that use images, statements, or presentations, to name a few. Kearney, Schuck, Burden, and Aubusson (2012) have suggested that mobile learning can be viewed from a sociocultural perspective in which learning is affected and modified by the tools used for learning, which in turn influence the ways the tools are used. Evidence of this concept in practice can be seen in the boom in social networking that has spanned the globe. Research now links the use of social networking as a key element in knowledge construction [8, p. 1-17].

Blended Learning

In line with the theory of social networking as a form of knowledge construction and the need for interaction among learners, are the concepts of blended learning or hybrid learning, which refer to learning that combines face-to-face classroom interaction with distance learning techniques to disseminate instructional materials and information. Blended learning can be used to provide a balance between virtual learning components with face-to-face interaction, thus increasing the likelihood for meaningful learning. However, it is important to ensure that pedagogical underpinnings (i.e. learning theory, instructional design, and the needs of the learners, etc.) are not overlooked in a blended learning environment [6, 5].

Open Learning

Another trend that emerged in 2008 is that of Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) [11,7]. Originally based on connectivism and networking (Daniel, 2012), MOOCs are primarily characterized by the following criteria: they are delivered online, offer large enrolment, are open for participation with little to no cost to the students, and follow a course format with learning goals specific to an area of [3, 5]. While sharing vast amounts of information and having a large student base is appealing for higher education institutions, MOOC learner persistence is of great concern. Researchers at the University of Edinburgh found that nearly 45% of learners who enrolled in MOOCs never became active learners in the online setting, with even fewer learners progressing through the course to obtain a statement of achievement indicating their learning [12, 5].

Boundary-crossing learning

In theorizing boundaries and learning, the research focuses on empowering participants to undertake boundary-crossing learning, which means purposeful and negotiated learning with culturally diverse people. Boundary-crossing may delineate organisations, locations and social groups; their exact natures are established in discussions between «boundary brokers» [5, p. 10]. Boundaries mark distinctions of characteristics such as political control, competence and behaviour. Boundary objects are artefacts of sufficient plasticity that they can be interpreted by multiple groups whilst retaining common identity for those groups [9, p. 25]. Boundary objects ought to assist with collaborative work, whilst enhancing the contributions of diverse knowledge and meaning [4, p. 87].

So, time dictates its own requirements and current situation of foreign language learning in higher military educational institutions has changed significantly. Thanks to the spirit of the times and changes in general in the world and in the minds of people the knowledge of foreign languages is obvious. Today it is important to prepare not only the specialist, but also a professional, when not military strength will be a decisive factor in the victory but the professionalism of military personnel. The results of the world, local wars, armed conflicts, major strategic operations, battles show that their success depends strongly on training, moral and fighting qualities of officers, their ability to identify and plan major measures to improve the combat readiness of troops (forces) and ability to implement them effectively into practice. Finally, education of our most innovative leaders is important both for executing the current national security strategy today, and for preparing future generations to adapt quickly and effectively so we won't be caught in a catch-up mode.

References

1. Abik, M., Ajhoun, R., & Ensias, L. (2012). Impact of technological advancement on pedagogy. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, 13 (1), 224-237.

2. Abrami, P.C., Bernard, R.M., Bures, E.M., Borokhovski, E., & Tamim, R.M. (2011). Interaction in distance education and online learning: using evidence and theory to improve practice. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 23, 82-103.

3. Educause (2013). 7 things you should know about MOOCs II. Educause learning initiative. Retrieved from http://www.educause.edu/ library/resources/7-things-youshould-know-about-moocs-ii.

4. Fominykh, M., Prasolova-F0rland, E., Divitini, M., & Petersen, S.A. (2016). Boundary objects in collaborative work and learning. Information Systems Frontiers, 18 (1), 85-102.

5. Grazia Scoppio Mapping Trends in Pedagogical Approaches and Learning Technologies: Perspectives from the Canadian, International, and Military Education Contexts/ Canadian Journal of Higher Education Revue canadienne d'enseignement supйrieur Volume 46, No. 2, 2016, pages 127 - 147.

6. Hiltz, S.R., & Turoff, M. (2005). Education goes digital: The evolution of online learning and the revolution in higher education. Communications of the ACM, 48 (10), 59-64.

7. Howard, K. (2014). Massive open online courses (MOOCs): Implications and opportunities for the community college system in New Brunswick. Post-Secondary Education, Training and Labour, Government of New Brunswick.

8. Kearney, M., Schuck, S., Burden, K., & Aubusson, P. (2012). Viewing mobile learning from a pedagogical perspective. Research in Learning Technology, 20, 1-17.

9. Kimble, C., Grenier, C., & Goglio-Primard, K. (2010). Innovation and knowledge sharing across professional boundaries: Political interplay between boundary objects and brokers. Maaninen-Olsson, E., & Carlsson, S. (2006). Knowledge Integration and the Meaning of Boundary Activities. In OLKC 2006 Conference at the University of Warwick (pp. 1-28). Warwick.

10. Means, B., & Roschelle, J. (2010). Technology and learning: An overview of technology and learning. International Encyclopedia of Education, 1-10.

11. Skiba, D.J. (2013). On the horizon: The year of the MOOCs. Nursing Education Perspectives, 34 (2), 136-137.

12. Woodgate, A., Macleod, H., Scott, A.M., & Haywood, J. (2015). Differences in online study behaviour between sub-populations of MOOC learners. Educacion XX1, 18 (2), 147-163.

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