Introduction.

The restrictions introduced due to the spread of the coronavirus infection Covid-19 have had a drastic effect on education in the vast majority of universities in the world. The transition

to teaching disciplines in a distance format was not smooth, both for students and teachers. We are now only starting to understand and assess the impact of the pandemic on higher education. ____________________________________

© Alexeeva E.A., Buryakova S.Yu., 2020

However, preliminary conclusions and recommendations have already been published in the reports of UNESCO, OSCE, International Association of Universities.

A number of surveys conducted among students and teachers from different countries allowed to identify some critical issues that threaten the achievement of the planned learning outcomes in the context of online learning:снижение качества преподавания в связи с неготовностью большой доли преподавателей к работе в формате онлайн-обучения;

• decrease in the quality of teaching due to the unpreparedness of a large proportion of university staff to teaching online;

• increased stress-levels among students due to the lack of personal contact with the teacher and abrupt changes in the organization of the learning process;

• mental overload among students due to the excessive amount of open educational resources available to be mastered without methodological recommendations on the teachers' part;

• mental overload among teachers due to a significant number of educational platforms, applications and other online learning tools [1, p.13].

• absence in some universities of a management structure in place to insure technical support of teachers and to facilitate the transition to online learning; as a result, teachers were forced to adopt a "learning-by-doing" approach while teaching or to imitate what would have been the face-to-face way of proceeding, yet using distance mode [2, p. 25].

Despite the challenges in terms of organization of online teaching and technical issues, the abrupt transition to the online format also had a positive effect, mainly related to the evolution of teachers' perceptions. Among these positive changes are:

• enhanced professional competencies and capacity building of university staff who have tested new tools and platforms for online learning;

• desire of teachers to propose more flexible learning opportunities and combinations of synchronous and asynchronous forms of work;

• changing views on the potential of hybrid learning and the adoption of online learning as one of the main delivery modalities [ibid., p. 26].

In many official reports hybrid, or blended, learning is considered to have a great potential, since it combines the best features of face-to-face learning and the power of information technology, thereby contributing to the renewal and improvement of teaching methodologies [3, p. 44].

In our opinion, recommendations for harnessing the potential of blended learning should rather be perceived as a call to action as the second wave of restrictive measures are being introduced in the UK, France, Spain and other countries. It is obvious that in the post-Covid world, blended and online learning should be easily interchangeable when needed [4]. In this regard, the relevance of creating foreign language courses in a blended learning format with a strong online component is beyond doubt.

The hypothesis of our research is as follows: the transition of language courses from blended learning to online learning is carried out without significant losses in the quality of teaching and learning and with minimal difficulties for teachers and students in terms of technology and methodology.

In this paper we attempt to describe the structure and principles of the course of French for specific purposes designed for the MA programme "Language support for project development in the field of international cooperation", implemented in the blended learning format with a strong online component.

The object of the research is the educational process of teaching a foreign language for occupational purposes. The subject of the research was the principles and technologies of effective teaching of French for occupational purposes in blended learning format.

Research methodology.

The theoretical background for the study are the methodological principles of teaching a foreign language in the format of blended and online learning, the principles of teaching a foreign language for occupational purposes, as well as the fundamental principles of a communicative approach to teaching a foreign language. The research material is represented by research papers and guidelines devoted to the design and evaluation of courses in the format of blended and online learning. The main research methods are survey, analysis of scientific literature, modeling of the structure of the adaptive course.

Research results.

In order to verify the research hypothesis of the study and identify risk factors acting in the context of language teaching at the Faculty of Romance and Germanic Philology of Voronezh State University, a survey was conducted among two groups of Master students. The first, experimental, group consisted of 15 students enrolled in the programme "Teaching a foreign language using online technologies" (field of training 44.04.01 "Teacher training) (hereinafter referred to as TT). Before the lockdown they learned the first and the second foreign languages in the blended learning format (for more details on this type of blend, see [5]). The control group consisted of 11 students enrolled in the MA program "Language support for project development in the field of international cooperation" (field of training 45.04.02 "Linguistics") (hereinafter - LSPD). The first and second foreign languages in this group had been taught in traditional face-to-face format before the restrictions related to the spread of Covid-19 were introduced.

The MA students answered a number of questions to identify the positive and negative aspects of distance learning, the factors that, in their opinion, influence the success of online learning, as well as the degree of satisfaction with the process of learning a foreign language during the lockdown related to the spread of Covid-19.

Firstly, students were asked to assess the effectiveness of learning a foreign language online on a scale from 1 to 5, where 5 is completely satisfied, and 1 is absolutely dissatisfied. Students' answers are presented in Table 1.

Table 1

Satisfaction of Master's Students with

the effectiveness of learning a foreign language online

	5	4	3	2	1	Нет ответа
LSPD	1 st.	3 st.	4 st.	1 st.	0 st.	2 st.
TT	9 st.	4 st.	2 st.	0 st.	0 st.	0 st.

The table shows that students with extensive experience in blended learning are much more satisfied with the effectiveness of online learning.

We also asked students to choose five factors that complicate online language learning among the following:

1) teacher's access to the necessary technologies (computer, software, high-speed Internet connection);

2) student access to the necessary technologies (computer, software, high-speed Internet connection);

3) communication with the teacher;

4) low level of proficiency in technologies and means of online teaching of a foreign language among teachers;

5) low level of information competence (knowledge of information technology) on the part of the student;

6) poor time management and self-discipline;

7) difficulties related to insufficient quality of technical equipment (low speed of the Internet connection, lack of a smartphone, laptop, webcam, etc.);

8) complexity of delivery and forms of work due to their poor adaptation to the format of online training;

9) difficulties in completing the final assessment tasks;

10) difficulties in mastering new software for online education;

11) insufficient technical and informational support from the university;

12) increased workload and stress levels;

13) Your option.

The most frequent answers to this question are summarized in Table 2 (factors are numbered according to the list above).

Table 2

Students' perspectives on factors complicating learning a foreign language online

	7	12	2	1	4	8	6
LSPD	4 st. (36%)	2 st. (18%)	1 st. (9%)	3 st. (27%)	-	2 st. (18%)	3 st. (27%)
TT	9 st. (64%)	8 st (54 %)	5 st. (35%)	3 st. (21%)	4 st. (29%)	3 st. (21%)	2 st. (14%)

Thus, both groups highlighted insufficient teacher and students' access to technology and devices as the greatest risk.

Finally, MA students were asked to select three success factors for online learning from the following list:

1) mastering approaches to online learning organisation;

2) mastering tools for online learning (educational platforms, applications, software);

3) adaptation of training content and forms of work to the online format;

4) motivation of students;

5) the personality and professional competence of the teacher;

6) experience of learning a foreign language online;

7) access to technical facilities and high-speed Internet connection.

The answers are presented in Table 3 (factors are numbered according to the list above).

Table 3

Students' perspective on Factors Determining the Effectiveness of Online Learning

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
LSPD	5 st. (50%)	4 st. (40%)	2 st. (20%)	5 st. (50%)	6 st. (60%)	1 st. (10%)	3 st. (30%)
TT	7 st. (47%)	9 st. (60%)	9 st. (60%)	5 st. (33%)	12 st. (80%)	2 st. (13%)	8 st. (53%)

The answers demonstrate the importance of tackling technical issues, as well as the necessity in competent planning and design of online education from students' perspective.

A survey was then conducted among 6 foreign language teachers working with LSPD MA students. Among them 1 person had significant experience in teaching foreign languages online, 2 had little experience, and 3 had no experience of teaching foreign languages online. In teaching practice before the new coronavirus outbreak 4 teachers used traditional teaching, 2 used blended learning. Among the factors that positively affect the effectiveness of the online learning process, the teachers of the master's programme highlighted the following:

- mastering tools for online learning;

- adaptation of training content and forms of work to the online format;

- personality and competence of the teacher;

- access to technical facilities and high-speed Internet connection.

As for the degree of satisfaction with the effectiveness of teaching a foreign language online, 3 teachers gave points 4, 3 teachers gave 3 points.

As the survey results show, the success of online learning is influenced by technical, methodological and personal factors. At the same time, in our opinion, the influence of all these risk factors can be minimized at the very beginning of course design process:

- technical factors (difficulties in accessing online learning tools and low speed of the Internet connection) are neutralized by careful selection of software and applications for performing various forms of online work;

- methodological factors (insufficient competence of the teacher in terms of organizing online learning, adapting training content and forms of work to online learning, etc.) can be overcome at the stage of designing the course structure via selecting types of assignments and assessment depending on the planned learning outcomes, planning a clear process of the content delivery;

- personal factors (student motivation, time management, involvement of unmotivated students) can be avoided when designing forms of work and determining the principles of interaction between students and teachers within the course in blended learning format.

In order to determine the principles behind the design of the course "First foreign language for occupational purposes", which would allow to minimize the influence of the identified risk factors, we analyzed two types of sources. The first group consisted of research papers devoted to the analysis of the positive experience of creating and implementing courses in the blended learning format. The second group are guidelines and toolkits for blended and distance courses design created by universities for teachers.

It should be noted that the concept of blended learning in most works is defined broadly enough as "learning activities that involve a systematic combination of co-present (face-to-face) interactions and technologically-mediated interactions between students, teachers and learning resources" [6, p. 234]. At the same time, the authors emphasize that there is no single model for blended learning courses, and the proportions in which classroom and online learning are combined depend on the specific discipline, the requirements of the educational institution, and many other parameters. Integration of the online component into traditional education should be driven by pedagogy, and not by technology.

However, when designing an adaptive blended learning course, one should bear in mind that during the lockdown though teaching is carried out exclusively online, synchronous interaction with students is mandatory. This, in our opinion, is a key difference from distance learning in its traditional understanding, where only asynchronous forms of work are often provided. That is, the structure of an adaptive course should be built in such a way that synchronous types of work planned for face-to-face classes can be easily transformed into an online format.

The design principles of a course in blended and online learning formats are very similar (see, for example, [7]). Further we list those that were used in the design of our adaptive course:

• constructive alignment and backward design: when creating a course, the planned learning outcomes should be a starting point determining the forms and types of assessment; the assessment in its turn influences the types of activities, forms of work and types of tasks [ 8, p.13].

• creation of a community of the course, the involvement of students in interaction with each other, with the course content and with the teacher through the integration of group forms of work, a multimedia format for presenting content, competent and timely provision of feedback and scaffolding from the teacher (for details see [9])

• a holistic approach to course design: elements of full-time and distance learning should be intertwined and form a logical continuation of each other. Technologies are not "superimposed" on the course, but are integrated into it [10, p.12].

In accordance with these principles and in order to allow organizing adaptive forms of work and implementing individual educational trajectories a number of educational technologies were identified to be used in the course:

• flipped classroom approach to content segmentation;

• modular organization of training content with additional components for independent study;

• dominance of formative assessment, including self-assessment and peer assessment.

The course design has the intended learning outcomes as a focal point, according to the principle of backward design and constructive alignment. Learning outcomes correspond with the competences of the Federal State Educational Standard 45.04.02 "Linguistics", developed by the discipline "B1.B.05 "First foreign language for occupational purposes". The competencies were divided into two groups:

1) communication skills:

• having skills for successful sociocultural and intercultural communication, ensuring the adequacy of social and professional contacts;

• developing a system of linguistic knowledge, which includes knowledge of the main phenomena at all levels of the language and the patterns of functioning of the studied languages, as well as functional varieties of the language;

• enhancing cognitive and discursive skills aimed at perceiving and generating coherent monologues and dialogues in oral and written forms;

• mastering the conventions of communication in a foreign language society, knowledge of the rules and traditions of intercultural and professional communication with native speakers of the target language;

2) soft skills:

• readiness to accept moral obligations in relation to the environment, society and cultural heritage

• readiness for constant self-development, improvement of one's qualifications and skills

• ability to understand the social significance of the future profession, high motivation to perform professional activities

• knowledge of ethical and moral norms of behavior adopted in a foreign cultural society;

• ability to adapt to new conditions, creatively use the acquired knowledge, skills and competencies outside the narrowly professional sphere.

The genre-based approach was chosen as the main approach to teaching French for occupational purposes in our context. By the genre-based / genre-oriented approach, we mean “the focus of language education on mastering communication in the genre aspect by purposefully mastering genre forms of everyday, public and / or professional communication based on models of speech genres that are relevant for a particular contingent of students” [11, p. 433]. The teaching technology within the framework of the genre-oriented approach consists of five stages that allow students to master the skills of creating texts of a specific genre:

1. Study of the parameters of communicative situations in which the texts of this genre function (the purpose of communication, addressee, context).

2. Modeling: analysis of examples related to the studied genre in order to highlight structural and linguistic features.

3. Joint production: creation of a text in the studied genre under the supervision of a teacher.

4. Independent production: independent creation of a text with subsequent feedback from the teacher.

5. Comparison: comparison of the studied features with the parameters of other genres and communicative contexts [12, p.8].

The following genres were selected as of main importance to LSPD students:

- genres of oral professional communication: interview, self-presentation, meeting, business telephone conversation, business discussion, presentation, press release, press conference;

- genres of written professionally oriented communication: motivation letter, CV, meeting minutes, informative business letters, complaint, refusal to satisfy a claim, offer, project justification, review, report, genres of Internet marketing (advertising post in social networks, project website, brochure).

In order to make the course adaptable to changing work formats and to facilitate the transition from blended learning to online learning, a series of steps describing teaching and learning activities was defined:

1. Online learning. Analysis of samples of texts created in the studied genre in order to understand the structural and linguistic features. The analysis is carried out according to the checklist suggested by the teacher, and the results are summarized in a table.

2. Face-to-face learning. Group discussion of the highlighted features, identification of gaps in language (lexical, grammatical, syntactic) skills, creation of a self-study plan to eliminate knowledge gaps using additional materials.

3. Online learning. Group project work on the selection and analysis of additional pieces of the studied genre, the selection of the most common vocabulary, grammar and syntactic patterns (information search), creating a group Wiki page with the results of the group project.

4. Face-to-face learning. Group discussion and peer review of Wiki pages. Creation of a text in the studied genre under the supervision of a teacher (in small groups) (communicative tasks close to situations of professional communication in a foreign language). Feedback from the teacher.

5. Online learning. Independent creation of a text in the studied genre (individually) (communicative tasks close to situations of professional communication in a foreign language). Peer assessment according to the criteria elaborated by the teacher. Assessment by the teacher. Discussion of individual strategies for mastering the genre based on the feedback received.

6. Face-to-face learning. Summative assessment. Independent creation of text in the studied genre taking into account the parameters of the communicative situation (group project, business game).

All forms of face-to-face learning are easily converted into online format if needed using applications and websites with free access and which do not require a high-speed Internet connection (for example, chats on the Moodle educational platform or in the WatsApp application, group work on creating a document in GoogleDocs, group video calls in Zoom, Skype, or in case of a low speed Internet connection recording presentations on a smartphone camera and sharing files via cloud storage, etc.).

Correlation of the planned learning outcomes - the competences of the Federal State Educational Standard formed by this discipline - with the education technologies and forms of work within the course allowed us to build the following matrix.

Table 4

Matrix describing the process of fostering planned competencies for the course "First foreign language for occupational purposes"

Learning outcomes	Competencies	Fostered via contents of the course	Fostered via completing specific types of tasks
Communicative skills	having skills for successful sociocultural and intercultural communication, ensuring the adequacy of social and professional contacts;		+ (communicative production tasks, group work)
	developing a system of linguistic knowledge, which includes knowledge of the main phenomena at all levels of the language and the patterns of functioning of the studied languages, as well as functional varieties of the language;	+ (scaffolding for self-study)	+ (exercises to develop language skills, communicative production tasks)
	enhancing cognitive and discursive skills aimed at perceiving and generating coherent monologues and dialogues in oral and written forms; mastering the conventions of communication in a foreign language society, knowledge of the rules and traditions of intercultural and professional communication with native speakers of the target language;	+ (analyses of examples of texts relevant for professional activity)	+ (creating group wikis summarising the results of genre-based text analyses; communicative production tasks, business games, group projects)
Soft skills	readiness to accept moral obligations in relation to the environment, society and cultural heritage	+ (discussion of topical social issues)
	readiness for constant self-development, improvement of one's qualifications and skills		+ (information research)
	ability to understand the social significance of the future profession, high motivation to perform professional activities		+ (business games, group projects)
	knowledge of ethical and moral norms of behavior adopted in a foreign cultural society;	+ (analyses of examples of texts relevant for professional activity)	+ (creating group wikis summarising the results of genre-based text analyses; communicative production tasks, business games, group projects)
	ability to adapt to new conditions, creatively use the acquired knowledge, skills and competencies outside the narrowly professional sphere.		+ (business games, group projects)

Conclusion.

As the result of this research, the following conclusions have been drawn:

1) At this stage already, the university community should take into account the risk factors associated with the spread of Covid-19 and take measures to minimize their impact, for instance, by discovering the potential of blended learning, combining the best features of face-to-face and online learning.

2) It is important to take into account the context in which training is carried out (the presence / absence of a sufficient technical equipment and management structures that facilitate the transition to blended and online learning, the experience of students and teachers in the transition to distance learning during the introduction of the first wave of restrictive measures, the most relevant risk factors).

3) The results of the survey confirm our research hypothesis only partially. Indeed, students of the Master's program in Teaching Foreign Languages Using Online Technologies showed a high degree of satisfaction with the quality of online learning. On the other hand, it was they who most often highlighted negative factors related to the lack of equipment and speed of the Internet connection. This, in our opinion, shows that when designing a blended learning course, one should fully use the potential of online tools that do not have high technical requirements.

4) As a result of the survey, three main groups of risk factors that complicate the transition to online learning were identified technical, methodological, and personal. The influence of all these factors can be minimized at the stage of selection of technologies and forms of work, task and assessment formats.

5) Taking into account the features of the professional context and the highlighted risk factors the following principles were selected to design a course of French for occupational purposes for the development of the course for masters of the LSPD programme: blended learning format, genre-based approach to teaching language for occupational purposes. A series of approaches was identified to ensure the logic and effectiveness of blended learning (modular course organization, formative assessment, flipped classroom).