Project Method as a Pedagogical Technology for Stimulating Students’ Educational Activity in European Universities

Abstract

 The pedagogical technologies that allow organizing and stimulating the search activity of students of European universities include the project method. This method develops the ability to acquire new knowledge in the process of their own educational and cognitive activity. The project method is a set of techniques, actions of students in a certain sequence, aimed at achieving a task or solving a certain problem that is significant for students and designed as a final product. The project method, being an effective pedagogical technology, corresponds to all general didactic principles. The introduction of such projects into the educational process develops students’ skills of independent work, their self-organization and responsibility, helps to organize teamwork, teaches social activity, and educates responsibility. This method places high demands not only on the student, but also on the teacher, requires their mutual activity, determination and goal-setting to achieve results. The project method is an objective indicator of the transition in the study of a foreign language from the threshold to the threshold advanced, and then the professional level, when it is possible to state the development of linguistic and sociolinguistic competence. The use of the project method is an indicator of the advanced stage of learning a foreign language at a university. Combined with traditional methods, it meets modern requirements for the formation of foreign language communicative competence of a future specialist in various fields.