THE FORMATION OF MOTIVATIONAL DOMAINS OF STUDENTS – FUTURE TRANSLATORS

Abstract

It was shown that if we took into account the positions of Cognitive Psychology, then the professional formation was directed, first of all, at a specialist in the paradigm of cross-cultural space. Therefore, the professional formation of a future specialist is, first of all, a process of forming a student as a Person of general and professional culture, which ensures his/her general functioning in the surrounding world and the space of our professional activity. In this article the professional development of future translators is considered from the standpoint of Cognitive Psychology. So, it is a process of forming the person’s personal and professional position of the individual, taking into account the diversity of subjective and objective factors, which involve the implementation of strategies for managing the personal resources which are necessary for professional activities on the professional level. It was noted that the professional development of the future interpreter also involved the formation of personally significant position, which was understood by us as a system of dominant values-semantic attitudes of a specialist to the socio-cultural environment, of himself/herself and his/her activities.
Materials and methods. The following theoretical methods of the research were used to solve the tasks: categorical, structural and functional methods, methods of the analysis, systematization, modeling, generalization. Empirical methods were: the method of observation, testing, which were used for a deeper, holistic study of the problem of formation of motivational domains of students – future translators.
Motivation of learning activity is considered by us as a complex, multi-component and multi-stage process in which the volitional, cognitive and emotional structures of the individual are actualized. The motivational sphere of students is provided with motives of different content, from the desire to become a highly qualified specialist and ending with the desire not to upset their parents. It should be emphasized that quite often the distant perspective gives rise to deep and fully realized motives for learning. Also the most important is a person’s attitude to his/her activity, and, accordingly, how he/she performs the process of the activity will largely be determined by how far the specialist sees the prospect of the tasks that lie before him/her.
To assess the formation of students’ motivational sphere we used four groups of motives: 1) educational and cognitive motives (passion for studying a foreign language, translation activities, passing a foreign language qualification exam at B2 level or higher); 2) professional motives (acquisition of foreign language professional communicative competence, desire to become a highly qualified specialist); 3) motives for social identification (to achieve respect from teachers, to keep up with classmates in the learning outcomes, to avoid condemnation and criticism for poor learning by adults and socially significant people); 4) utilitarian motives (desire to work abroad, to improve their financial position through learning a foreign language, acquiring translation skills, constantly receiving a scholarship).
The analysis of the results of the questionnaire made it possible to identify the main motives of students’ readiness for the performance of educational activities. They are characterized by the presence of motives with both near ones and far perspective motives. These are educational and cognitive motives, professional ones, social identification motives, utilitarian ones.