MOTIVATION OF STUDENTS’ COGNITIVE ACTIVITY BY WEB-QUEST TECHNOLOGY

The issue of effective foreign language teaching techniques in higher educational institution is considered. According to the Federal state educational standards, the main objective of teaching to foreign languages in higher educational institutions is mastering the foreign language to a level of communicative competence that allows students to solve professional problems effectively in the corresponding sphere of their activity. Using a range of pedagogical innovations, based on methodology of problem and individual-focused approaches, the web-quest technology is one of the most effective pedagogical strategies for students’ foreign language communicative competence development. Its didactic potential promotes the development of students’ critical thinking and their intellectual development; it stimulates their activity, autonomy and involvement in authentic context of their future professional activity. As we know, the motivation of students’ cognitive activity is one of the essential pedagogical conditions for foreign language communicative competence formation. An attempt to analyze how useful the internet learning resources are is taken, i.e. the web-quest technology, for its formation and development. The web-quest structure assumes both an individual and team work, where interactive form of teaching much more corresponds to individual-focused approach. Thereupon the web-quest technology promotes motivation to the study, which comprises not only students’ interest in searching necessary information, but also their willingness to fulfill the task independently. Hence, students develop thereby the abilities to their independent activity that helps to transform the information received into deep consideration and comprehension. Thus, an integration of web-quest into the educational process solves one of the key tasks of contemporary education an increase of out-of-class students’ independent work volume. Therefore, the metacognition process forms the process of self-control of the individual, and the independent work acquires the pattern of controllability of the student. Its effectiveness in the educational process is followed by the teacher’s organization, which is aimed at the tasks implementation settled at each stage of the web-quest.

cognitive activity motivation, web-quest technology, subject-matter, pedagogical conditions