Optimization of teaching English to Psychology students by means of expressive psychological technique

Abstract

The article presents a developed expressive psychological technique as a means of teaching a foreign language to Psychology students. It involves a set of kinesthetic (mimic, posture, tone) reactions, paralinguistic (tempo-rhythmic and melodic-intonation peculiarities of speech), extra-linguistic (laughter, sigh, etc.), proxemic (movements) means of nonverbal pedagogical communication, which instrumentally enrich methods of organizing joint educational activities of students for mastering a foreign language. It has been proved that means of nonverbal expression optimize (facili-tate, accelerate) the process of mastering a foreign language by future psychologists and gaining their professional communicative competence. In order to test the efficiency of the suggested program, 115 university students majoring in Psychology, 79 teachers of secondary school and 8 university teachers took part in the experiment (total – 202 people) were invited to take part in the experiment. According to the research outcomes, assertiveness and objectivity of both the students and the teacher-experimenter have increased; altruistic emotional orientation of the teacher has strength-ened, which led to the growth of cognitive interest (gnostic emotions), pleasure from the process of mastering a foreign language (hedonistic emotions); the students’ academic performance and professional motivation, as well as foreign language communicative competence have significantly improved