FORMATION OF THE FUTURE PHYSICS TEACHERS’ MOTIVATION TO LEARN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Despite the need for knowledge of a foreign language in various spheres of education, graduates of pedagogical universities of non-linguistic specialties do not know it well enough. There are many reasons for explaining this phenomenon, but one of the main reasons is insufficient motivation to study this discipline. The purpose of this study was to form the future Physics teachers' motivation for studying English, taking into account the professional specifics of the preparation direction as well as students' psychological and pedagogical qualities. According to the goal, some tasks have been solved, as follows: the pedagogical conditions for the formation of students' motivation for studying English have been determined; the ways for their introduction into the educational process of the professional training targeted to the future physics teachers have been developed. To implement the set goal, there was used a method aimed at developing profession-oriented, educational and research projects on topical problems of the future professional activity. The peculiarity of the project method was this one: it combined some elements of interactivity alongside with the application of information and communication technologies, that is, both pedagogical conditions for the formation of the future Physics teachers' motivation for learning a foreign language. The project was carried out in accordance with the content-oriented modules of curricula in the English language and the section “Mechanics” which constitutes the discipline “Physics”. Due to the cooperation of the teacher and her undergraduate student of the Physics Department, including certain discussions with students, the theme of the educational and research project was defined: “Introduction of elements referring to modern Physics into Mechanics”. The project consisted of two parts: «The idea of space and time: from ancient times to our days”, “Contemporary ideas about the nature of matter and the material unity of the world». Work on the project development covered three main stages containing appropriate contents and functions performed by students and teachers: preparatory, main and final. The preparatory stage was aimed at creating motivation, goal-setting, and planning. The main stage consisted in making decisions, conclusions regarding the ways of project implementation, determining the methods of presenting the obtained results, information collecting and its creative processing. The final stage was aimed at the verification, defense and evaluation of the project. As the observations of the students' work during the project showed, interviews with them, as well as the results of the final questionnaire, the implementation of their educational and research projects covering the professional interest, motivated the students' study of the English language for specific purpose on the basis of certain pedagogical conditions.