Home – Home – Jornals – Professional Education in the Modern World 2014 number 4

The article discusses the main differences between course books and textbooks, reveals the main advantages and disadvantages of general and electronic textbooks when teaching students of technical profile foreign language professional reading. The authors investigate available teaching resources applied in the technical institution on the subject “Professional Foreign Language” and demonstrate the results of general and electronic textbooks comparative analysis; they underline the main features of each edition. There is an attempt to identify structural and organizational design of general and electronic textbooks applied in teaching foreign language in the technical university; the paper defines the main functions of these manuals which build educational process. The authors carry out comparative analysis and show the leading role of electronic teaching aids as they are considered to be the main aids of teaching foreign language due to integration of information technologies and education. The authors refer the following characteristics to the main strong points of electronic workbooks when teaching foreign language professional reading; they are interactivity, which reveals in possibilities to make situations similar to the professional ones; multimedia, which is achieved by means of including audio materials, video materials and images into the electronic workbook; high flexibility to the rapidly changing education which implies possibility of editing material on a regular basis. In the end of the article the authors make conclusions in respect to the results achieved and analysis carried out. They mention that electronic teaching aids conform to the favorable environment of foreign language professional reading development of students trained in the technical institution.