Formation of self-regulated learning skills using blended learning when teaching Russian as a foreign language

Full Text

Introduction

Scientific knowledge is formed helically: at each new turn there is a need to take a second look at phenomena that have been well studied and understood as elements of a certain system. The results of this understanding are fixed in scientific terms. New facts put forward by life require a thorough analysis of the concepts designated by these terms, which now need to be placed in a new system including these new facts and applied to the changed reality. At the end of the twentieth century and, above all, the first quarter of the 21st century, one of the most central issues of Russian and foreign pedagogy is the theoretical interpretation and development of mechanisms for incorporating new facts in education into practice.

Firstly, we are talking about a reform that affected the organization of the learning process itself (this applies, first of all, to higher education). In educational programs (including those in foreign languages), the amount of time allocated to classroom lessons and student’s autonomous work changes dramatically. Now priority is given to the latter (sometimes the number of hours for autonomous work can exceed the number of hours for classroom work several times)¹.

Secondly, as a result of the emergence of new teaching tools in the pedagogical arsenal (information and communication technologies, didactic materials created on their basis in digital format), new forms of learning have emerged — distance learning and blended learning. The features of these forms of learning, which distinguish them from traditional forms of learning, are that:

– the teacher and the student, separated by distance from each other, interact differently, the rhythm of mastering the course changes: “the basis of the educational process during [distance learning] is the purposeful autonomous, self-regulated work of the student [letter spacing hereinafter is ours. — O.Z., N.P.], who can study at a place convenient for himself, according to an individual schedule” (Azimov, Shchukin, 2009: 65);

– the two-way process of transfer and acquisition of knowledge (Rubinstein, 2002: 495) is fully or partially mediated by specific communication tools.

It is natural that the pedagogical community again turns to the discussion of concepts that have long been introduced into scientific use: autonomous, self-regulates learning and autonomy of the student. Attempts are being made to clarify the content of these concepts (Khavronina, 2016; Hawe, Lightfoot, Dixon, 2019), the influence of the student’s constant involvement in digital reality on his ability to act autonomously, by himself is considered (Lilian, Ah-Choo, Soon-Hin, 2021), and the optimal balance between autonomous and classroom work in new educational conditions (Klobukova, Ermakova, Chernyshenko, 2023), the capabilities of electronic learning tools and related forms of learning for the effective organization of self-regulated learning are explored (Rudenko-Morgun, Arhangelskaya, Apakina, Al-Kaysi, 2018; Information technologies in teaching Russian as a foreign language, 2019; Su, Noordin, Jeyaraj, 2023; Prasetya, 2023).

The aim of the research is to:

– to characterize the autonomy of modern students, whose activities (including learning activity) are formed in the digital world and are almost completely mediated by specific technical means;

– to propose methods for organizing autonomous, self-regulated learning of such students in a foreign language course (Russian as a foreign language) taking into account new realities in education.

Materials and methods

Analytical, descriptive, and empirical methods, observation and interpretation methods were used. The material was the works of domestic psychologists devoted to understanding the place of autonomous, self-regulated learning in the learning process, as well as analyzing the negative impact of modern technologies on personal development. The study was conducted on the material of the practice of teaching Russian to international students of the 2nd year bachelor’s degree at RUDN University (specialty “Psychology”). The participants in the study were students from Antigua and Barbuda, Bulgaria, Vietnam, Guinea-Bissau, Greece, Zambia, China, Colombia, Mongolia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Ecuador. A total of 40 people took part in the study.

Results

As a result of the study, the critical need for turning the L2 acquisition theory and pedagogy to psychology in the educational situation of the first quarter of the 21st century has been substantiated. In the course of this study, turning to the works of Russian psychology classics and their modern followers made it possible to highlight new aspects of the traditional for the RFL acquisition theory and pedagogy problem of organizing autonomous, self-regulated learning of students.

The psychological nature of the new difficulties of autonomous, self-regulated learning that arise among modern students, whose activities (including learning activities) are formed in the digital world and are almost completely mediated by speific technical means, is characterized. It is shown that at present, in order to successfully achieve learning goals, a teacher needs, in fact, to develop new forms of behavior in students, in particular, the ability to act autonomously.

Based on the provisions of the cultural-historical concept in Russian psychology, methods for developing autonomous, self-regulated learning skills in modern students in blended learning environments are proposed. An example of the use of the described methods in educational practice, when teaching Russian as a foreign language, is demonstrated.

Discussion

In a review of the works of foreign authors devoted to the problem of autonomy in teaching and learning foreign languages (Benson, 2007), one of the leading specialists in this field, Ph. Benson, notes that this problem first became the subject of scientific discussions since the mid-1970s of the past century. In 1979, a book was published that gave probably the most cited definition of [student] autonomy in foreign literature: autonomy is understood as “the ability to take charge of one’s own learning” (Holec, 1981: 3). As you can see, this definition is extremely broad. In subsequent works, attempts were made to clarify this definition and highlight certain aspects of autonomy. Thus, L. Dickinson bases his interpretation of autonomy on special learning “situation, in which the learner is totally responsible for all of the decisions concerned with his learning and the implementation of those decisions” (Dickinson, 1987: 11). Most authors consider autonomy as a mental property of a student: as independence, the ability to think critically, make decisions and implement them by themselves (see, for example, (Little, 1991: 4)). Based on the results of a study of the implementation of distance learning in pedagogical practice, the requirements for the autonomy of a student mastering a course (for example, a foreign language) remotely were clarified: “[Learners] should be able to re-evaluate their role and responsibility as language learners. They should be able to assess their personal learning needs, have an idea of how to monitor progress, and be able to manage time effectively. They also need to use language learning strategies in effective, flexible and creative ways” (Thang, 2005: 252).

Unfortunately, Ph. Benson’s extensive review does not mention Russian scientists. Meanwhile, turning to the works of the latter would significantly expand the time frame for studying the problem of student autonomy, moreover, it would make it possible to comprehend autonomy (and self-regulated learning) as a part of a certain psychological and pedagogical system. In this case, we mean the works of outstanding Soviet psychologists — L.S. Vygotsky and S.L. Rubinstein.

In 1926, in the final chapter of the book “Educational Psychology” L.S. Vygotsky writes about a new system of educational psychology, which presupposes a new understanding of teacher’s work and, accordingly, a different understanding of the place and role of the student in the pedagogical process. According to Vygotsky, a teacher should not just be a keeper and transmitter of knowledge, but, first of all, he should become an organizer of a social environment (in other words: learning conditions), which will help to direct the learner’s activity onto the right track, and also help him to learn “everywhere and everywhere [on his own] to seek and obtain knowledge, even when he receives it from the teacher, and not to swallow ready-made food that the teacher will serve him.” “The learner, — Vygotsky emphasizes, — is educated by himself. <…> It is not so important to teach a certain amount of knowledge as to cultivate the ability to acquire this knowledge and use it” (Vygotsky, 2010: 385).

As you can see, L.S. Vygotsky considered autonomy and the student’s activity associated with it as the most important components of the process of mastering knowledge. The teacher must channel his creative energy, first of all, into developing in the student these qualities necessary for fulfilling the main aim of teaching.

In the fundamental work “Foundations of General Psychology” (first edition — 1940) by academician S.L. Rubinstein, the concepts of autonomous, self-regulated learning and student’s autonomy are included in the description of learning activity. S.L. Rubinstein regarded learning (the activity of the student) as the central part of the learning process. This is explained by the very nature of the teaching, the active role of the student in learning: “learning is not a passive perception, as it were, the acceptance of knowledge transmitted by the teacher, but mastering this knowledge by a student [letter spacing hereinafter is ours. — O.Z., N.P.].” True mastering of knowledge means “the ability to operate the acquired material in accordance with various tasks that may arise when using acquired knowledge for theoretical and practical purposes” (Rubinstein, 2002: 495, 507). Mastering of knowledge by students (in the sense that Rubinstein understood it) is the main aim of teaching, in accordance with which the teacher needs to organize his work. Thus, one of the stages of mastering the material, according to Rubinstein, is its comprehension (“in-depth comprehension”) by the student. For this purpose, as Rubinstein points out, “some special stage in teaching” should be singled out. This stage can include “various types of autonomous, self-regulated learning” (Rubinstein, 2002: 506–507), when the student will need to apply the acquired knowledge to solve the given task.

S.L. Rubinstein also formulated the requirements for a person mastering knowledge: activity, a responsible attitude to the learning process, self-control, adherence to discipline, the ability to manage one’s time, the presence of certain character traits and volitional qualities that ensure self-regulation of the individual (Rubinstein, 2002: 510).

Thus, in the concept of S.L. Rubinstein, the student’s autonomy is interpreted, on the one hand, as a mental quality necessary for learning and improving while learning. On the other hand, the autonomy of the student is the key to the separation autonomy of the student from the teacher in the future, a guarantee that the student will be able to freely and creatively use the acquired knowledge to solve practical life problems. Autonomous, self-regulated learning (properly organized) is as a mandatory part of learning that ensures the acquisition of knowledge.

It seems that in the first quarter of the 21st century, the interpretation of student’s autonomy proposed by Russian psychology classics and foreign authors has not lost its importance. However, it is necessary comprehend the influence of the mediation of almost any of student’s activities by technical means and social technologies invented to make life easier (Tkhostov, Surnov, 2005: 21) on the personality of the student (“digital native” (Prensky, 2001)). Is such a student fully capable of self-organization, self-regulated activity, for example, self-regulated distance language learning (Andrade, Bunker, 2009) (autonomous, self-regulated work, as we can see, places very high demands on the individual)?

This question can be answered by turning to teaching experience and then to the works of psychologists explaining the facts reported by teachers.

Thus, the American teacher and educational specialist M. Bauerlein in his article (Bauerlein, 2008) discusses two cases from his practice. When he asked his students to learn a poem 20 lines long by heart for the next lesson, a perplexing question was asked: “For what purpose?” The student who asked this question did not mean to express displeasure at all. She sincerely could not understand what the purpose and value of this task was. Painstaking work in order to remember someone’s words seemed pointless to her. Why teach if you can “get” this poem at any time with one click of the mouse? Another example given by M. Bauerlein. When he asked advanced literature students to find specific information about famous writers without going online, the students were confused. To open a reference book (a book printed on paper), to go to the library to get advice from a librarian, etc. — no such thought occurred to them. The ability to easily, without any effort, obtain the necessary information from the Internet suppressed the personal initiative of students.

We had occasion to write about the peculiarities of reading texts in digital format, perceived from a monitor screen (Zavjalova, 2019) — these are the kinds of texts that are familiar to digital natives. An analysis of a large number of studies has shown that the quality of reading a digital text is much lower than reading a text presented on paper. This is due to a number of factors listed in the article mentioned above. Let us point out one of them, noted by American researchers: when working with text in a digital format, the reader does not set the goal of analyzing the text himself, of being an active subject of activity. Faced with the need to interpret the text they are reading, students tend to “relinquished their responsibility to the ‘e-book narrator’ or gave the tablet the ‘final word’ for explaining text and new vocabulary” (Martin-Beltran, Tigert, Peerce, Siverman, 2017:145).

Every language teacher (for example, a teacher of Russian as a foreign language) probably had to hold in his hands essays of students, which, in fact, were compilations of fragments of different texts on the topic of the essay/creative work that the student found on the Internet by entering the topic given by the teacher into the search bar of the search engine. Presumably, the students consider unnecessary to formulate an idea themselves, to select the right words, grammatical means for its design, to think through the composition of the text, etc. What for? They can get the “product” they need with just a few clicks.

How to interpret these (and many similar) facts from the point of view of psychology? The study by A.Sh. Tkhostov and K.G. Surnov (members of the Faculty of Psychology of Lomonosov Moscow State University) revealed that the inherent modern person’s “desire for maximum relief of absolutely all aspects of life with the help of technical and organizational means” (Tkhostov, Surnov, 2005: 20) is a factor of personality underdevelopment or personality degradation. A person turns out to be incapable of self-regulated activity, since modern technologies, while facilitating “the realization of many needs, bringing the moment of satisfaction closer,” simultaneously deprive “the activity of its core — self-regulated effort” (Tkhostov, Surnov, 2005: 20). There is practically no “improvement of the actual personal means of development and self-realization” (Tkhostov, Surnov, 2005: 24), since a necessary condition for the implementation of these processes is internal, self-regulated effort. On the other hand, the cultural and social environment of modern person does not become a factor for development and self-development: “In a comfortable, easy world, there is no need for such improvement” (Tkhostov, Surnov, 2005: 24).

It seems that these conclusions of psychologists have great practical significance for pedagogy: they help to understand the characteristics of modern students and the specifics of their learning. Thus, if we understand that in the digital world² there is no place for effort, which is “of fundamental importance for the generation of higher forms of the psyche” (Tkhostov, Surnov, 2005: 17), it becomes possible to explain the insufficient development of attention, memory, thinking among students of the 21st century, necessary for learning and, as a consequence, the insufficient formation of a number of skills and abilities to work with information³. Proposed by A.Sh. Tkhostov and K.G. Surnov’s model allows us to describe the behavior typical digital natives when solving the problems facing them: they do not consider it necessary to act themselves, for example, to “acquire knowledge and use it” themselves, since another way of achieving a goal seems easier and more rational to them. On the other hand, the digital environment in which they are accustomed to learning largely blocks their independence and does not create conditions for personal activity.

All of the above together is a serious obstacle to proper self-education, to self-regulated learning as it traditionally described⁴. In the new educational reality, when time allocated for autonomous work in higher education in Russia is comparable to classroom hours, the search for ways to overcome this obstacle (search for additional methods for organizing students’ autonomous work and at the same time an attempt to develop their autonomy, self-regulation skills) becomes a new important task of pedagogy, RFL acquisition theory and pedagogy.

Ph. Benson, recognizing the undoubted difficulty of forming student’s autonomy in extracurricular settings, shares the view of many authors that the solution to the problem is to combine electronic and traditional learning — in other words, the optimal form of learning is called blended learning. However, Ph. Benson immediately states that most of the works on blended learning known to him focus on the “technical side of the problem”. Few studies attempt to analyze the difficulties that students experience when faced with the need to manage their learning on their own. Meanwhile, as Ph. Benson justly remarks, self-regulated learning outside the classroom, without direct contact with a mentor, requires serious theoretical consideration (Benson, 2007: 27).

In RFL acquisition theory and pedagogy, significant steps have already been taken in this direction. Thus, in the Ph.D. thesis of L.V. Apakina proposed and tested a pedagogical model of “creative autonomous, self-regulated work of foreign students at the pre-university stage of study [level A1–A2] <...> using technologies, tools and tools of the modern electronic environment” (Apakina, 2011: 4‒5). In the work, based on various classifications of creative autonomous, self-regulated work, “a typology of types of project-based activities of foreign students was developed according to levels of autonomy — from completely algorithmic projects to heuristic (creative)” (Apakina, 2011: 14). The author analyzes in detail the stages of formation of educational autonomy using the example of project-based activities.

Received by L.V. Apakina’s results can stimulate and direct further searches for effective methods for organizing autonomous, self-regulated work of foreign students in the RFL course for university students, which involves achieving a higher level of language proficiency. It’s important to emphasize that once again that new requirements for curricula and new forms of teaching force us to intensify these searches, since now autonomous, self-regulated learning is considered to be the leading form of learning in higher education (in Russia).

We shall describe methods we propose for developing students’ ability to act autonomously using the example of a assignment for autonomous, self-regulated learning, which we use in the practice of teaching Russian to foreign students of the 2nd year of the specialty “Psychology” at the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia named after Patrice Lumumba (RUDN University).

When developing this assignment, we based on the following reasons:

1. Purpose of learning. Psychology calls the acquisition of knowledge the purpose of any learning: “the ability to operate with acquired material in accordance with various objectives that may arise when using acquired knowledge for theoretical and practical purposes” (Rubinstein, 2002: 507). In relation to language teaching, this means the student’s ability to freely use the units of language and speech acquired within the course to solve communicative problems in the communication situations provided for by the language course.
2. The place of autonomous, self-regulated learning in the process of acquiring knowledge. According to Rubinstein, autonomous, self-regulated learning is useful at the stage of comprehending the material. In linguistics, comprehension of the studied linguistic unit is understood as awareness of its three necessary characteristics: semantics (what?), form (how?) and function (for what?) (Zolotova, Onipenko, Sidorova, 2004: 45). Both linguists and classics of RFL acquisition theory and pedagogy point out that a complete understanding of all the characteristics of a linguistic unit for its correct use in communication is possible only when this unit is placed in the text, for example, when producing one’s own statement.
3. Features of autonomy, specific of modern students’ activity, thoroughly described above (see pp. 266–268 of this article).
4. Form of learning. Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia named after Patrice Lumumba (RUDN University) is implementing blended learning, including classroom training and e-learning — autonomous, self-regulated work of students in the TUIS (Telecommunication Educational Information System) of RUDN University⁵.
5. Regularities in formation of internal behavior (according to Vygotsky). As L.S. Vygotsky points out, internal action (for example, self-regulated effort) is genetically external action (directed and managed by another person) (Vygotsky, 1983: 141‒144).

The assignment itself is as follows. At the end of studying the speech topic “Biography, profession, career”⁶ students are asked to write an essay on the topic: “To choose a profession: what does it mean?” The purpose of the assignment is to stimulate students to construct a text on the topic of the lesson by their own using the largest possible number of studied language and speech units. It is obvious that when organizing their own text, when implementing a certain communicative intention, students get the opportunity to fully comprehend these units of language and speech. It is also obvious that autonomous, self-regulated work, which implies producing one’s own text and operating with acquired knowledge, in most cases cannot be carried out if a language teacher simply offers students an essay topic; it is necessary to take into account the psychological differences of modern students and their approach to activity.

Consequently, it is important to organize the learning process in such a way as to create conditions for students to act by their own, to try to deprive them of the opportunity to solve the problem facing them in the usual way: with the help of technical means and social technologies to make life easier.

Here, as already noted, blended learning provides great assistance to the teacher. The assignment for autonomous, self-regulated work (writing an essay), posted in TUIS RUDN University, from our point of view, should be preferably preceded by a lesson in the classroom. At this lesson we suggest to discuss the topic of the essay during a discussion in the group.

To moderate the discussion, the teacher develops a discussion plan (a plan for the future essay), which includes:

1) aspects of the topic studied in the lesson (in particular, it is expected to refer to examples from the lesson, so, when completing the assignment: Приведите примеры людей, которым посчастливилось найти своe призвание. Объясните, почему именно этих людей вы выбрали в качестве примера, — students can use information from the text about L.S. Vygotsky, which was read and discussed in the lesson);

2) questions and assignments, in their very wording containing the studied lexical and grammatical units on the topic and organized in such a way as to encourage students to use these units as building material for their own statements (for example: Выскажите ваше мнение, что выбрать в наши дни: работу по душе или высокооплачиваемую работу?);

3) material for arguing the expressed opinion (for the most part it is taken from the lesson, small additional examples from the Internet are also used).

Class discussion is managed through a presentation shown on a large screen. Working in the classroom allows you to:

1) involve students in real, not virtual, communication, show examples of answers to questions, examples of completing assignment that correspond to the points of the essay plan;

2) to a large extent prepare subsequent autonomous, self-regulated work of students. After the lesson in the classroom, students are assigned to write an essay on the topic: “To choose a profession: what does it mean?” TUIS RUDN hosts a presentation that almost entirely repeats the one shown in the classroom. The purpose of the new presentation is to manage students’ autonomous, self-regulated activity (Figure).

The first four slides of the presentation
Source: Slides created by O.S. Zavjalova, N.S. Phan

Completed assignments (texts of essays) are uploaded by students to TUIS RUDN within the deadlines established when creating the electronic assignment. Assessing essays is carried out by the teacher as essays are uploaded directly to TUIS RUDN University. Essays are assessed according to the parameters recommended for assessing productive written speech: 1) adequacy of the text to the topic of the essay; 2) compliance of the number of semantic units in the text with the plan proposed in the presentation; 3) full coverage of the essay topic; 4) logic and coherence of the presentation of the material; 5) operating the language and speech material studied in the lesson (for more details on the parameters for assessing written speech, see (Shchukin, 2015: 533)).

Conclusion

The presented model of students mastering the techniques of autonomous, self-regulated work in the course of Russian as a foreign language is implemented in blended learning environments and to a certain extent repeats the path of formation of higher forms of behavior, when subsequent interiorization should presuppose a mandatory stage of exteriorization. To paraphrase L.S. Vygotsky (Vygotsky, 1983: 225), in general the proposed methods for organizing autonomous, self-regulated learning can be characterized as follows: the student’s autonomous, self-regulated learning from the very beginning becomes guided learning. Initially, the teacher directs the student’s activity during a classroom lesson, Then the student, being at a distance from the teacher, begins to learn to manage his activity himself.

Special attention to the fundamentals of psychology (one of the basic sciences for RFL acquisition theory and pedagogy), is of particular importance at the present time. As was shown above, at the present time a teacher, in order to ensure that students master knowledge, needs to overcome the negative influence of modern technologies on the development of personality, in particular, to form in students the ability to act autonomously, by their own, without transferring their functions to a machine. This will make it possible to more effectively use new forms of learning, which require the student to have a developed ability to acquire knowledge himself and fully utilize it.

 

_{¹ In relation to teaching foreign languages (teaching Russian as a foreign language), we mean courses intended for undergraduate and graduate students (i.e., not for the initial stage of language learning and teaching).}

_{² We call the digital world the social and cultural environment in which the personality of a modern student is formed.}

_{³ For more information on this, see, for example, the book by the American neuroscientist M. Wolf (Wolf, 2018).}

_{⁴ “Tasks intended for [autonomous work] presuppose learners’ activity and creativity [letter spacing hereinafter is ours. — O.Z., N.P.], stimulate the learners to search for solutions on their own” (Azimov, Shchukin, 2009: 268).}

_{⁵ “TUIS (Telecommunication Educational Information System) is an information and educational environment, a portal where each teacher can create an online educational course in their discipline, selecting the necessary educational materials and collections of links for each topic/module to useful resources on the Internet, creating interesting interactive tasks and tests. Located at esystem.rudn.ru” // RUDN University Directory. URL : https://handbook.rudn.ru/learn/tuis.html.  TUIS RUDN operates on the LMS Moodle platform.}

_{⁶ The topic is presented in the textbook: Shaklein, V.M. and others. (2018). Russia yesterday and today: a textbook on the Russian language for foreign students of humanities. II certification level. 2nd ed. Moscow : RUDN publ. (In Russ.).}

About the authors

Olga S. Zavjalova

RUDN University

Author for correspondence.
Email: zavialova-os@rudn.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-2420-5313
SPIN-code: 7057-6520
Scopus Author ID: 57204534519
ResearcherId: AAB-2416-2020

Candidate of Philology, Associate Professor, Associate Professor of the Department of Russian Language and Teaching Methods

10 Miklukho- Maklaya St, bldg. 2, Moscow, 117198, Russian Federation

Ngoc S. Phan

University of Social Sciences and Humanities

Email: phanson@hcmussh.edu.vn
ORCID iD: 0000-0001-6461-1140
SPIN-code: 6746-6603
ResearcherId: AAE-4277-2019

Candidate of Philology, Head of the Department of Russian Linguistics, Faculty of Russian Philology

10-12 Dinh Tien Hoang St., district 1, Ho Chi Minh City, Socialist Republic of Vietnam

References

Supplementary files

There are no supplementary files to display.