FEATURES OF TEACHING FOREIGN LANGUAGES IN CONDITIONS NEW EDUCATIONAL PARADIGM (THEORETICAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PEDAGOGICAL PREREQUISITES FOR LEARNING IN COOPERATION)

Learning in cooperation is one of the types of learning, the essence of which is to learn with the help of each other in a small group. This pedagogical technology allows an intellectually and socially promoting model of studies for students. It engages learners to accomplish group assignments or work together to reach general target. In recent years, interest in cooperative learning has grown tremendously. The reason for which is the publication of studies that clearly show the use of this technology to promote advances in writing and reading, problem solving in mathematics, conceptual development in science, and higher levels of reasoning and thinking. This paper discusses the development of cooperative learning during past decades; basic principles and positions of the competence-based approach; the purposes, features and difficulties of teaching a foreign language in the first year of universities.