Pedagogical mastery of specific purpose teachers in the context of leadership in education

摘要

This paper focuses on the discussion of the necessity in changing of some requirements to a higher school English teacher's qualification under the influence of changing approaches to teaching/learning English for specific purposes. In the context of leadership in education some urgent problems of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) teaching of agrarian universities students are under the authors' consideration as agrarian universities stand apart from humanitarian or technical universities and have their own peculiarities. Having reviewed some modern approaches to ESP teaching the authors concentrate on competence approach which is now actively spreading at secondary school. With implementation of competence approach certain aspects of ESP teaching process are to be changed and more attention should be paid to student's needs. To gain leadership positions in teaching pedagogical mastery of an ESP teacher lies now in her or his ability to constantly motivate students to learn English independently, look for necessary materials without teacher's assistance, be able to critically evaluate the new information, work out her or his own viewpoint on the content. ESP teacher's duty is to help each student find his own algorithm of learning English and work out a personal strategy of mastering knowledge of the target language. We propose to pay more attention to independent reading of professional texts forming and developing in such a way student's reading competence. In addition, it is necessary to teach students written communication via the Internet and in this way to form and develop competence in writing. More attention should be paid to social and cultural aspects of ESP teaching as it helps keep students' interest to learning English. Knowledge of the potential partners' customs and manners of communicative behaviour facilitates development of joint business mutual understanding and effective cooperation in future.