Effective Ways of the Speaking Club Organization at Medical Universities

Abstract

Due to economic globalization, highly skilled professionals are not limited anymore in their access to the international job market. Ukraine is a part of the international job market due to its Pro-Western political course and active involvement in international projects all over the world. With regard to an increase in the overall competitiveness of the Ukrainian workforce, the University graduates are required to have their foreign language proficiency at a level B2 and higher. Depending on their future specialty, the University students complete a two or four-year foreign language course that is an integral part of any university training program. The intention to make active learning results from external (the need to pass exams) and internal factors including self-improvement, personal and professional growth, career development. Interactive application of various teaching techniques can be effectively realized on a regular basis through a preparation period and during the Speaking Club sessions. Based on the literature review and personal experience, the Speaking Club can be defined as an interactive extracurricular activity requiring the application of modern interactive teaching methods that support professional learning and knowledge, promote social exchange by the development of the basic language and interaction skills. The Speaking Club must be observed as an integral part of the foreign language studies that motivates students to learn English for professional purposes at universities. However, the concept of the Speaking Club as an interactive extracurricular activity should be studied for its effectiveness in terms of the foreign language proficiency level. The aim of the present research is to study the effectiveness of the Speaking Club as an interactive extracurricular activity in learning English for professional purposes at medical universities. With regard to the aim of the present research, the following tasks were formulated: define the concept of the Speaking Club based on the literature review and personal experience; find out the effective ways of the Speaking Club organization as well as describe its structure, roles and responsibilities of the participants; assess the effectiveness of the Speaking Club by estimating changes in both language proficiency level of the participants and their social activity engagement before and after the experiment.