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The main idea of modern education is to build competences as a produce of university educational process. One of the most important competences of intending teachers to be built is mobility competence, which is a component of professional pedagogical competence. We believe, to train a mobile teacher is possible within a purposefully created cross-cultural educational university environment, where the designed technology of developing intending teachers' academic mobility based on the cross-cultural approach is implemented. The empirical methods of the research are represented by observation, interlocution, interview, questioning, testing, expert review, generalization of independent data, pedagogical experiment, and mathematical statistics. To estimate the readiness of intending teachers for academic mobility under the conditions of cross-cultural educational environment, four levels of readiness are offered: optimal (high), admissible (middle), critical (low), and inadmissible (not ready). To determine the level, we have developed three criteria (cognitive, motivational-valuable, acting-reflective) and their indicators. At the motivating stage of the pedagogical experiment we conducted surveys of different respondent groups (random sample including online format, 1261 respondents) with the help of the questionnaires we had developed. The received data were used in the training course "Teaching a foreign language through the culture of native speakers", which contributed to the building of mobility competence of intending teachers. At the monitoring stage of our experimental education the comparison of the results of the incoming and outgoing assessment according to the developed criteria and indicators showed significant growth of the students' readiness for academic mobility, which allows us concluding that the designed technology of developing academic mobility based on the cross-cultural approach is effective in building mobility competence of intending teachers. [For the complete volume, "NORDSCI International Conference Proceedings (Online, October 11-13, 2021). Book 1. Volume 4," see ED625509.]

In digital era technology is constantly reshaping our future and creates new demands for educators to bridge the gap between old school methodology and digitally-oriented professional landscape. Digital natives, who are flooding our universities at the moment, can't imagine their lives without mobile phones and social networks. The question that naturally arises is why not to use these ICT advances in and out of the classroom in order to enhance learners' outcomes in both hard and soft skills? The paper presents the study which evaluates the impact of tertiary-level student blogs in English on the development of their professional and social competences from the students' perspective. The research questions were: (1) to investigate the students' experience with running an educational blog; (2) to evaluate the impact of a student educational blog in Public Speaking Course on students' foreign language proficiency level perceived by language learners themselves; and (3) to assess the students' beliefs and evaluations of the development of their soft skills due to the blogging technology interwoven into the academic process in Public Speaking Course at the university. The method employed in the current research was a questionnaire study to find out learners' opinions about the impact of students' blogs on their professional and social competences. The experiment was conducted at Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University (Russia) in which two study groups participated with the total of 32 students. The participants as part of their Public Speaking course had to run a multi-media educational blog in the English language as a portfolio of their progress in this discipline. The questionnaire included demographic questions and research questions. Research questions addressed the respondents' experience with blogs, their attitudes to blogging, and the perceived impact of blogging technology on their foreign language proficiency level and soft skills. The results of the study showed that most participants were interested in having more experience with both professional and personal blogs in the future and gave high ranking to the impact of such blogs on their foreign language acquisition. The research confirmed our hypothesis that students' multimedia blogs in the target language would have a positive impact on students' professional as well as social competences and would enhance their motivation and participation rates. [For "NORDSCI International Conference Proceedings (Online, October 12-14, 2020). Book 1. Volume 3," see ED616185.]

The main idea of modern education is to build competences as a produce of university educational process. One of the most important competences of intending teachers to be built is mobility competence, which is a component of professional pedagogical competence. We believe, to train a mobile teacher is possible within a purposefully created cross-cultural educational university environment, where the designed technology of developing intending teachers' academic mobility based on the cross-cultural approach is implemented. The empirical methods of the research are represented by observation, interlocution, interview, questioning, testing, expert review, generalization of independent data, pedagogical experiment, and mathematical statistics. To estimate the readiness of intending teachers for academic mobility under the conditions of cross-cultural educational environment, four levels of readiness are offered: optimal (high), admissible (middle), critical (low), and inadmissible (not ready). To determine the level, we have developed three criteria (cognitive, motivational-valuable, acting-reflective) and their indicators. At the motivating stage of the pedagogical experiment we conducted surveys of different respondent groups (random sample including online format, 1261 respondents) with the help of the questionnaires we had developed. The received data were used in the training course "Teaching a foreign language through the culture of native speakers", which contributed to the building of mobility competence of intending teachers. At the monitoring stage of our experimental education the comparison of the results of the incoming and outgoing assessment according to the developed criteria and indicators showed significant growth of the students' readiness for academic mobility, which allows us concluding that the designed technology of developing academic mobility based on the cross-cultural approach is effective in building mobility competence of intending teachers. [For "NORDSCI International Conference Proceedings (Online, October 12-14, 2020). Book 1. Volume 3," see ED616185.]

The paper presents the study which evaluates the effect of a short-term course in English phonetics held at University College London on tertiary-level students' academic progress in the Theory of Phonetics class at their home university. The study also examines the evaluations of the students of the impact of the phonetic course abroad on the development of their phonological competence. The research questions were: 1) to investigate the students' experience with the short-term course in English phonetics held at University College London; 2) to evaluate the impact of this course on phonological competence perceived by language learners; 3) to assess the students' academic progress in the Theory of Phonetics class at their home university after their short-term study abroad and compare these results with the academic progress of the students who had studied the Theory of Phonetics only at their home university. The methods employed in the current research combined a questionnaire study and a pre- and post-experiment tests to assess students' phonological competence. The experiment was conducted at Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University (Russia) in which two groups participated with the total of 96 students. 28 students in addition to their study of phonetics at their home university attended at least once the short-term course in English phonetics in London in the period from 2012 to 2014, while 68 students studied phonetics only in their home university. The questionnaire included demographic questions and research questions. Research questions addressed the respondents' experience with phonetic course abroad, their attitudes to this course, and the perceived impact of the course on their phonological competence. Pre- and post-experiment tests were chosen as the second research method to assess the students' academic progress in the Theory of Phonetics. The results of the study showed that most participants were interested in having more experience with short-term phonetic courses abroad in the future and gave high ranking to the impact of the course on their phonological control. The research confirmed our hypothesis that short-term phonetic courses abroad as part of academic mobility program had a positive impact on students' academic progress, developed students' phonological competence and thus should be integrated into Russian academic system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the results of the research conducted at the faculty of foreign languages at Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University to learn the emotions of students evoked by different tasks performed during a phonetics class and investigates what can make a course of foreign language pronunciation less anxiety-generating. The source of data was learners' reactions and opinions on particular tasks they were involved in during phonetics classes. The author shares a few ideas on how the teacher can reduce the anxiety load during pronunciation classes. Although the students majoring in English at the pedagogical university are already linguistically advanced and highly motivated to achieve native-like pronunciation, some of them appear not to benefit much from phonetics classes, making very little progress in the pronunciation aspect. The cause of taking limited advantage might be language anxiety accompanying a language pronunciation class. A study was conducted among 38 third-year students of the faculty of foreign languages who had already taken a two-year phonetics course at the university by the time of the experiment. The method used in the research was a questionnaire study where the learners specified their level of anxiety on a Likert scale from 0 (indicated 'no anxiety') to 5 ('very high anxiety') next to each activity of the lesson. The participants were also asked to fill out reflection sheets to share their feelings and opinions about each task. Opinions and reflections of the learners participating in the present research showed that the most anxiety-provoking tasks presupposed theoretical knowledge, straight-forward assessment and performing in front of the others. It seems that one of the ways of lowering the anxiety level experienced by learners during a phonetics class can be ensuring that the student's ego will not be endangered during the lesson. The tasks during which the students feel most secure and claim to be able to focus on real practice are those performed in pairs and groups. Needless to say, it is also the teaching style, manner of providing feedback and correcting errors that determine classroom dynamics. What seems important is adjusting the classroom activities and pace of work to the learners' level, and thus allowing them to succeed. Finally, the learner should be shown how anxiety can be lowered and encouraged to search for strategies that for him/her are the most effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the application of corpus linguistics in language teaching and introduces the results of a pilot educational research project aimed at the evaluation of Russian university students' attitudes to the use of a corpus-based set of classroom activities to study English pronunciation. The corpus-based approach exemplifies data driven learning, it generates learner autonomy by training students to draw their own conclusions about language use. Two of the most challenging topics in practical phonetics classes for Russian EFL tertiary-level students are varieties of spoken English and connected speech processes. Normally EFL learners in Russia are not exposed to spoken varieties of English in their everyday life and they find both production and comprehension of fluent English speech rather difficult. The designed activities exploited deliberately chosen corpora for students to make their own discoveries about pronunciation patterns. In this study, pre- and post-experiment survey data as well as observational data were gathered from a group of 54 students in an effort to access their attitudes to the corpus-based language learning. Descriptive statistics tools were used to process the results from the questionnaires. To calculate the significance of differences in the responses given by the subjects, chi-square analysis was employed. Open-ended questions were processed analyzing key words and key word frequencies. The results of the research demonstrated the statistically significant difference of the students' attitudes to the use of corpus-based activities in the classroom before and after the experiment, that have changed from being uncertain to positive. This change can be explained by the participants' low level of corpus linguistics awareness before the experiment and their realization of its benefits as a result of corpus-based classroom activities in which they participated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]