Vocabulary and reading in English as objects for teaching computer text processing

Abstract

Knowledge of the English language and basic computer text processing technologies is essential for any modern person regardless of their professional interests. It is known that the English language and, to a lesser extent, computer technologies are not always easy for modern people to master, which is quite surprising since modern people live in a world with the prevalent use of the English language and computer technologies. This work proposes a problem-oriented approach to mastering both the English language and, primarily, basic computer text processing technologies while maintaining a vocabulary. Creating an environment for comfortable reading in English is based on a phonetic transcription (Q-version) created in the English alphabet. Using such a transcription can separate the study of the English language from its outdated writing system. These tasks are implemented with minimal editing of the already developed code in SQL (in the Access program) and VBA-Word (with Excel as the database). Both subtitles to modern TV series (chosen by students) and articles from Open Access scientific journals were used. This approach has been tested over 5 years with 2nd-3rd year students of the Chemical Technology Faculty in Kyiv Polytechnic Institute within the "Computer Information Processing" discipline. At the same time, the main problems of students in passing this topic were identified, and it is proposed to use this approach already at the high school level, which could increase the average level of mastering both computer technologies and the English language. However, not all essential tasks have been solved yet: replacing English text with Q-form text is carried out only for words in dictionary form and needs to be refined for words in non-dictionary form (with -(e)s, -ed, -ing endings). In the second stage, it is planned to implement the proposed methodology in a software environment implemented in a single programming language (Python with SQL or JavaScript with NoSQL). This will allow mastering computer technologies at a higher level and create more comfortable conditions for working with various texts in English. In general, there is a need to move from researching the effectiveness of a problem-based approach to creating sets of relevant tasks for various disciplines.