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make corrections to the book. We suppose that to realize these two principles it is necessary to do two things. Firstly, it is important to formulate essential methodological characteristics of a textbook in accordance with the teaching-learning theory that underlies the choice of texts and tasks and also show the principles of the classroom activities organization. Secondly, the algorithm of textbook development should be formulated in such a way that every stage of the process has some clearly written benchmarks that outline the desired outcomes of the author’s work and can be referred to target textbook characteristics. Then the necessary alterations can be made at the early stages of teaching material planning.

Lastly, one more principle should be mentioned. The process of textbook development must be efficient, which means that we need to get the maximum result at minimum cost and effort.

E. M. Turlo emphasizes a serious difficulty that arises in the process of competenceoriented textbook development. It is caused by the interdisciplinary character of competences. Some personal qualities, social, cognitive and professional competences cannot be directly related to the textbook objectives and are formed by a number of educational subjects, extracurricular research and internship programmes [5, p. 100]. Notwithstanding this difficulty the principle of interconnection between teaching theory and practice of teaching materials production and the principle of predictability mean that it is vital to define the output of textbook design process in the form competence-oriented methodological characteristics. According to B. A. Kruse the resulting product features should also be related to all the stages of a project planning and imple-

mentation so that the authors can coordinate and verify their actions [1, p. 100].

We turn now to consider the results of the analysis of interconnection between language for specific purposes teaching-learning process features, the competences that students acquire and methodological characteristics of teaching materials.

‒A major direction of development in the sphere of language for specific purposes teaching methodology is enhancing practical professional aspects of teaching materials. Teaching methods and techniques that coordinate professional, social and language skills are emphasised. Course aims are defined on the bases of real workplace tasks that determine the choice of texts, lexis and grammar patterns as well as the choice of teaching techniques.

‒There is a number of authors who focus their attention on conditions for students’ social and cultural development through foreign language learning, on opportunities for realization of their creative abilities, enhancing their motivation for learning languages and professional development. The competence-based approach in teaching a foreign language for specific purposes means not only development of communicative competences, oriented on practical tasks in a professional area, but also development of their personal qualities. The most important personal characteristics are motivation for self-development and self-education, ability to analyze one’s own activity results and take them into account in further work and study, creativity, initiative, critical reasoning, ability to analyze information, forecasts events [6; 7].

‒It has been proved that one's professional qualities development is possible if motivational, cognitive, creative, ethic and emotional aspects are involved in teachinglearning process. The concept of productive learning acts as theoretical bases for classroom management and organization. This concept means that teaching-learning process is targeted at students’ personal development so that they perceive the world as a socio-cultural whole, and they acquire knowledge, skills, abilities and get experience while working on projects, essays, being involved in scientific, historical, cultural processes [8, p. 7–8]. Learners’ intellectual activity is in pursuit of independent solutions, reasoned and feasible choice of options, personal responsibility for the results of their work and study. The texts that are created by students are the material product of their work whereas cognitive meth-

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ods and strategies, creative abilities, language learning techniques are the intellectual product of their activity.

‒ According to L. E. Alekseeva a language for specific purposes class is effective if it is based on the interactive approach, which can be considered as a branch of the learner centered approach [9]. All the learning tasks imply productive collaboration of all participants – the learners and the teacher. This kind of collaboration is impossible without real interaction between the participants in the course of solving problems and discussing matters that are challenging and related to their professional interests and needs.

An important factor, which must not be neglected, is the connection between the teaching materials and the students’ educational environment. This connection can be realized if the teacher takes into account the fact that the foreign language students are learning helps them to study other subjects because it provides access to international sources of information and enables them to communicate with students and lectures from other countries.

Modern language teaching methodology increasingly emphasizes sociocultural, sociolinguistic and pragmatic aspects of written and spoken texts. It is widely recognized that intercultural communication cannot be successful without the participants’ ability to perceive, understand, compare and accept each other’s values, traditions, customs, behaviour patterns, etiquette, views and also without mutual respect for those cultural aspects, which should be thoroughly considered as important things in communication. In publications on foreign language teaching methodology authors highlight the significance of learners’ motivation for studying other cultures [10; 11]. Foreign language learners should become aware of specific cultural facts, communication patterns and interaction norms and also their own native culture. Scientific literature emphasizes the importance of maintaining the motivation to master the cultural component of foreign language [12; 13]. Therefore a textbook should address those cultural aspects.

At present research in language teaching methods suggests that special attention should be paid to communicative tasks that imply solving a problem. Efficient teaching materials offer learners a range of tasks that require learners to define the ways they can approach each task, work out the task solving algorithm, collect and select information, evaluate and analyze the results. Many authors claim that tasks that incorporate problem solving activities and discussion on controversial issues are more challenging and therefore more interesting and motivating than

‘neutral’ ones. [5; 8].

Motivation is regarded as an important factor in teaching materials selection [6; 7; 9]. It is essential to select the texts and tasks that are relevant to the learners’ profession and adequately reflect their future workplace contexts and situations. According to N.A. Dmitrochenco, motivation for learning words and grammar patterns is related to a learner’s ability to anticipate what language units he or she will need in certain professional communication situations, to plan what should be said, what words and phrases would be appropriate[7, p. 79].

A further aspect of a textbook production relates to the rhetorical devices and language forms it uses. We accept that teaching instructions layout should use dialog form, which is a rhetorical tool that helps to enhance motivation and engagement in learning. Dialog form of teaching material layout means that the author uses certain types of open-ended questions that stimulate learners’ activity. Working with a textbook becomes similar to a person to person conversation, which is initiated by interesting questions, which are set by the book and answered by the learner. The examples of questions that can be recommended are the following: “Why, do you think, this … is necessary (important, effective)?”; “Estimate the probability of …”; “Explain the reasons (outcomes) of …” etc.

The next important aspect of teacher-produced textbooks is that they should provide a wide range of tasks for independent learning. When designing a textbook a teacher can take into account all resources that their students may use. The efficiency of independent learning activities depends on the following. Firstly, all the instructions should set clear and feasible targets of homework activities. Secondly, homework tasks should be interesting and motivating. There

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should be guidelines on what kind of additional sources of information could be used and what type of texts students have to produce. Also the tasks should provide learners opportunities for self-evaluation and assessment.

In a real classroom situation learners’ communicative competence level, motivation, and language learning experience can differ. In one group some learners have some experience with certain professional contexts while others don’t. Therefore when embarking on the design of a textbook a teacher needs to compile a range or texts that differ in language difficulty level and require different levels of background knowledge to be comprehended. A choice of tasks of different difficulty levels should be developed.

All the above can be incorporated in a system of methodological characteristics of a language for specific purposes textbook. The table below relates target social, communicative and professional competences to methodological characteristics of a language for specific purposes textbook (Table 1).

Table 1 Methodological characteristics of a language for specific purposes textbook

The competences above (Table 1) were formulated on the basis of the current educational standards for higher professional education and resources that report on research into approaches to communicative, social and professional competences formation in foreign language classroom.

According to the principle of sequentiality of actions in project development, and the principle of standartisation, which were considered earlier in the article, the process of development of a foreign language for specific purposes textbook is considered as a sequence of stages. Each of those incorporates a number of steps with clear aims. A number of models have been built to describe curriculum and teaching materials design. Most of them include planning, implementation, evaluation and correction stages. Particular steps within these stages depend on what kind of object is planned and the conceptual framework of the projected teaching-learning process.

O.G. Polyakov introduced a two-level model of foreign language for specific purposes curriculum design process, which, with certain alterations, can be applied to teaching materials design [14]. Let us consider it in detail.

1.Input data selection. At this stage a general plan of a textbook is outlined. The teacher decides on the kinds of communicative situations and topics to cover, the skills the students need to master and on teaching methods and techniques that are appropriate for target communicative situations. A list of types of texts that students need to be able to produce at the end of the course is compiled.

2.Texts selection and tasks development. Texts are chosen, analyzed and, if necessary, adapted. Essential skills and strategies are defined. Vocabulary and grammar structures are listed. The textbook structure is outlined. Teaching instructions are written. The initial plan is corrected.

As a result of our research a more detailed algorithm has been introduced. It consists of four stages.

1.Input data selection.

2.Textbook concept mapping.

3.Plan implementation (texts selection and tasks development).

4.Evaluation and correction.

At the stage of input data selection teaching aims and objectives are determined in detail. It is necessary to produce an inventory of the particular specific objectives that the textbook is meant to fulfill. There are two reasons why this is extremely important. Firstly, if the objectives are specified accurately and precisely, it is easier to plan the content and the structure of the

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book, determine sources and compile all the necessary materials. Secondly, as we concluded from our experience, official documents with syllabus description don’t provide thorough definition of all the language units and skills that students need to acquire. A syllabus description offers a basic overview of what the aims are. Only when the teacher begins to analyse professional communication contexts, many of essential specific features of professional interaction and issues for discussion that match students’ interest are revealed.

Let us turn now to discuss the methods and the terms that should be used to define input data for a foreign language for specific purposes textbook. Obviously it is important to reflect the main specific features of professional practice including its cognitive, social and communicative aspects. Most researchers in the field of business communication and foreign language teaching methodology use topics and communication situations as workplace interaction simulation constructs. All the ongoing efforts are made to reproduce them in classroom so that learners develop abilities that they need to handle all the specified situations and learn all the words related to the selected topics.

There is a sufficient number of publications devoted to communicative situations analysis. The authors try to take into consideration all the factors that determine communicative patterns in different contexts. The main factors are a) communication circumstances (time, place, etc.); b) participants’ relationships and roles; c) participants’ communicative intentions; d) topics; e) changes in participants’ attitudes and intentions; f) overall context of interaction.

Obviously, it is impossible to predict and make an accurate description of all the communicative situations an individual can encounter at work. There are too many variables that determine a situation (time, place, roles, etc.). It is also rather difficult to identify the most typical ones so that they reflect the use of a foreign language in professional practice in all its complexity and diversity.

To resolve this problem we suggest that a foreign language for specific purposes textbook development model describes the structure of professional practice as a complex of professional tasks, communicative situations and content topics. Modelling typical professional tasks involves defining certain factors including the aim, the problem to solve, information sources, efficiency evaluation parameters and text types that students need to be able to interpret and create. The specific parameters such as time, place, roles of participants are not defined, because a typical professional tasks, being formulated as a result of generalizing a range of real life situations, is abstract. When the authors of a textbook develop exercises, they reconstruct communicative situations in which professional tasks are solved. Then they decide on the content topics for each situation.

Learners’ needs analysis approaches are described by a number of researchers. Foreign language use contexts, skills and strategies as well as professional needs, interests and motives are defined through questionnaires and interviews and as a result of monitoring professional practice. However these methods don’t guarantee a comprehensive view of what should be taught in the course. In addition to the sources that we noted above it is necessary to analyze publications on business communication in the future graduates’ field of work. It is also important to remember that in professional contexts some communicative strategies, rhetorical and pragmatic skills can be transferred to a foreign language from the students’ native one. So, when exploring specific features of professional communication teachers can rely on books on business communication and speechmaking in both native and foreign languages. Furthermore, there are a number of specialized Internet sites with job advertisements, which can be considered as reliable sources of information on required competences. As a rule these sites provide extensive job descriptions listing the most important job requirements and responsibilities.

It is essential for all teaching materials including general language course books, general business language books and language for specific purposes textbooks to ensure that learning objectives are interconnected and progress gradually to form necessary competences. Teacherproduced textbooks need to be effectively integrated in the teaching process which also uses oth-

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er materials. In this sense it is necessary to find out what students already know, what tasks they are able to implement, what experience with specialized texts they have and what professional terms they are familiar with.

To define the input data for a textbook we need to know the following:

1.learners’ professional needs analysis results (professional contexts, tasks, text types; communication situations, topics and corresponded competences);

2.learners’ language proficiency level at the beginning of the course, their experience with professional tasks and texts in both native and foreign languages;

3.competences that are formed by other subject courses before the language for specific purposes course begins;

4.professional and cognitive competences that are formed in the course of studying language for specific purposes;

5.target level of communicative competences specified by the curriculum description;

6.learners’ professional and educational needs;

7.the objectives and content of the teaching materials that are already used in the course including general language books.

Provided we acquire and examine necessary information for all the points above, we can list the learning objectives that are not realized in the existing course books. They constitute the gap that ought to be filled by teacher produced materials. At this level it is vital to guarantee that the input data adequately reflects the learners’ professional needs. Besides, learning aims and objectives should be realistic and can be fulfilled in within the course period.

The following aspects should be in the focus of the textbook authors’ attention. In order to equip students with competences for professional tasks it is necessary to itemize all the skills and strategies that the tasks involve. This means that for each task we need to define communicative efficiency parameters, which will reflect all the target language and cognitive abilities. In practice we can do this if we consider texts that have been created by professionals and tied to certain tasks. Besides, publications on business communication should be studied. According to modern theory of communication, interaction is efficient if the participants’ communicative intentions are expressed and interpreted fully and correctly, all the necessary information is transmitted, received and understood, emotions are expressed and recognised in exactly the way that is intended by all participants. Many authors suggest that effectiveness of communication should be measured by certain parameters that take into account four aspects: linguistic, discursive, strategic and socio-cultural [15, 16].

When the input data for a textbook is specified, there is a need for a conceptual vision of what the textbook is going to be like and how it is going to function. So the next stage is mapping the concept of the textbook. All the teaching strategies, ideas and techniques realized in a textbook are based on certain linguistic concept or concepts, methodological approaches and cognitive theories. Therefore the authors’ ideas about teaching methods and the content structure of the textbook that comply with the chosen language teaching and learning theories are fixed in a form of a list of topics, text types, types of learning tasks and exercises. The sources of the texts are found. A draft of the textbook structure is formed. Ideas for possible variants of lesson scenarios are suggested. It is important to check that already at this level of development of a textbook the target methodological characteristics are realized.

Plan implementation stage is divided into two phases. The first one is the phase when texts are selected, structured and adapted, grammar patterns and vocabulary are listed and the sequence of input language content is determined. Then it is the phase when language exercises and communicative tasks are developed. Teaching instructions are written.

Let us turn to consider some important principles that contribute to the effectiveness of learning activities and facilitate formation of students’ competences. Lexical exercises have to provide conditions for students to remember how specialized theme-related lexical units are interconnected. Actually the teacher does not have to be an expert in the students’ professional

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sphere to define and verbalize the most sufficient links between the professional terms and notions in the selected vocabulary syllabus. It is important for the teacher to identify and focus the students’ attention on the relations between specific notions and concepts that are reflected in the chosen texts. This can be done through exercises that are designed in such a way that they highlight those relations. In a scientific text there is a number of typical logical organizational patterns, for example “reason – consequence”, “problem – methods to solve”, etc., that involve professional terms and core academic vocabulary, and therefore can be used in learning task design. These vocabulary techniques that involve “content structuring” tasks integrate and activate lexical skills, discourse and cognitive competences along with professional knowledge and skills.

In regard to communicative activities design the teacher’s main purpose is to simulate real life communication in the process of solving professional tasks. To make task development process more efficient we suggest the following method. First, typical professional key questions are formulated. Then communicative situations are described via all the necessary parameters (time, place, roles, attitudes, etc.) and content topics are specified. For example, for PR students the following key questions were produced.

1.What are the reasons of the current situation?

2.What pubic communication strategy is appropriate (considering professional ethic, probable reaction of the public, possible outcomes)?

3.What tactics would you recommend?

4.Would the chosen measures be effective? Why?

5.What public group is the campaign aimed at?

6.What channels are used? What is the effect? Is it satisfactory or not?

7.What communication channels would be relevant to the target public group?

8.What information is interesting for the target audience? Do we need to introduce any background facts?

9.What is the main message of the campaign? How should it be formulated?

10.What linguistic and paralinguistic means of communication are used? How do they influence the audience? Why?

Evaluation and correction stage includes both evaluation of the textbook by experts (teachers) and assessment of learners’ results. Measures to improve the textbook are defined.

There are a number of various approaches to textbook efficiency evaluation, which are reflected in different sets of parameters. Before assessment of the textbook by experts can be conducted, it is necessary to select the most important features of the textbook that should be used as a basis for developing evaluative questions. The evaluation parameters listed in Table 2 have been derived from the characteristics of a language for specific purposes textbook developed on the basis of the competence-oriented methodological approach.

In conclusion, the article considers an algorithm of language for specific purposes textbook development that comply with definite methodological characteristics formulated as a result of the analysis of interconnection between language teaching-learning process features, the competences that students acquire and methodological characteristics of teaching materials. The theoretical basis for the methodological characteristics that are presented in the article is the compe- tences-oriented approach. A detailed algorithm of textbook design is introduced. It consists of four stages: input data selection; textbook concept mapping; plan implementation (texts selection and tasks development); evaluation and correction. It is important for the authors of a textbook to verify the results of their work with the planned methodological characteristics at every stage of a textbook construction. The evaluation parameters suggested in the article have been derived from the characteristics of a language for specific purposes textbook developed on the basis of the competence-oriented methodological approach.

Bibliographic list

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3.Selevko G. K. Pedagogicheskie tehnologii na osnove aktivizacii, intensifika-cii i jeffektivnogo upravlenija UVP: monografija. / G. K. Selevko. – M.: NII shkol'nyh tehnologij, 2005. – 288 s.

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9.Alekseeva L.E. Metodika obuchenija professional'no orientirovannomu ino-strannomu jazyku. Kurs lekcij: Metodich. posobie. – SPb.: Filologicheskij f-t SPbGU, 2007. – 136 s.

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12.Komarova Ju. A. Nauchno-issledovatel'skaja kompetentnost' studentov filolo-gicheskih special'nostej // Formirovanie bilingval'noj lichnosti na osnove kompetentnostnogo podhoda / Otv. red. G. A. Baeva. – SPb.: Izd-vo S.-Peterb. un-ta, 2012. – S. 113–148.

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UDC 81'38; 81*42; 811.133.1

Volgograd State University, PhD in Philology, Associate Professor at the Translation Studies Department

Elina Yurjevna Novikova e-mail: nov-elina@yandex.ru

E.Ju. Novikova

DISCOURSE-DETERMINED SPECIFICITY OF VIDEO EXCURSION AND VIDEO

GUIDE IN COMPARATIVE ASPECT14

The paper considers the peculiarities of tourist discourse from the perspective of indirect excursion activities in the case of “video excursion” and “video guide” genre.

The research has shown that the above-mentioned genres have some similarities and some differences. Excursion short story as a text verification of tourist discourse serves as a uniting component of any excursion type. Excursion short story has its own structure: introduction, body, and conclusion. However, strategies implementation of communication action within each specific excursion type will be different due to its pragmatic and formal factors and will be differently verified by verbal and non-verbal means. In spite of some similarity of intertextual conventions (usage of tourist terminology, composition text peculiarities, eventfulness, etc.) the examined excursion types reveal some differences caused by anthropological factor as excursion communication success depends on guide’s language personality type, culture-determined traditions in verbal and non-verbal representation of one or another genre, etc.

Key words: excursion discourse, video excursion, video guide, tourism, excursion short story, discourse practice.

Tourist branch is a polyfunctional phenomenon in terms of economic, marketing, cultural, social, communicative and intercultural potentials. Tourism development as one of the top priorities is the subject of numerous All-Russian and regional programs and researches in recent times. Modern tourism services develop under the conditions of intercultural and cross-cultural globalization and include accessibility in the language and communicative aspect as well as accessibility through various media channels. Thus, one of the options of a wide audience’s familiarity with culturally significant objects regardless of temporally and spatially determined peculiarities of excursion discourse is video excursion and video guide, which is the object of this research.

The theoretical basis of the research is the papers on tourism discourse and its genre varieties. A range of papers deals with excursion activities within the framework of excursion discourse, though the angle of research shifted towards detailed analysis of direct form of “excursion” verbal communication and guide’s language personality. An appeal to the indirect excursion communication forms is viewed as quite reasonable, new and demanding a detailed analysis of discourse significant practices as well as revealing of linguocultural description.

The tourism is very important in the era of developing integration and globalization processes, which redefined further factors of this branch development. As E.V. Moshnyaga mentions, tourism, as a form of intercultural communication, as well as tourist space, demands

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© Novikova E.Ju., 2015

14 This article was prepared with the financial support of the RHF, the regional competition "The Volga lands in the history and culture of Russia," project number 15-14-34001 Linguistic and logistics translation multilingual Internet portal: regional guide to the coordinates of globalization (Volgograd and Volgograd Region).

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