Rekun N. Content and Organization of Teaching English to High School Pupils Specializing in Economics

The dissertation is dedicated to the problem of content and organization of teaching English to high school pupils specializing in Economics. The didactic and psychological premises of specialized training of senior pupils have been theoretically substantiated. The research tends to focus on the approach of teaching English for Specific Purposes while Business English is considered to be its branch. Needs analysis and target situation of high school pupils have been taken into account when formulating the complex aim of teaching Business English. The emphasis is made on the communicative, linguistic and psychological content components. The classification of business areas has been carried out on the grounds of systematical approach which resulted in the selection of topics, localization, communicative roles and communicative functions within eleven business areas. Due to theme-based approaches applied in course design there have been created three models of specialized training organization in high school. The thesis emphasizes on the background knowledge in Economics to be acquired by high school pupils in the process of teaching Business English. As a result of the conducted research the task of forming senior pupils’ pre-professional communicative competence has been grounded. Business English course designed on the basis of the selected content components is aimed at the development of pre-professional communicative competence of high school pupils specializing in Economics. Two series of experiment were conducted to prove the validity of the selected content, its effectiveness was confirmed during the experimental Business English teaching. Methodological recommendations on how to apply the selected content within offered models of organization of teaching Business English in high school have been developed and implemented in five secondary schools.