Evaluation of strategies in teaching legal discourse in “Professional Kazakh language” course

Abstract

Relevance. Legal terminology and professional discourse acquisition are a part requirement set for law students when learning the Kazakh professional language. Purpose. The present paper aims at investigating and evaluating the effective strategies of teaching the Kazakh legal discourse to pre-service law students in the “Professional Kazakh language” class. This study also attempted to identify students' attitudes towards the course “Professional Kazakh language” the subject content of teaching Kazakh professional legal discourse and effective strategies of teaching legal discourse to develop communicative and professional competence of law students. Moreover, this paper has studied and analyzed the criteria for evaluating students learning outcomes, and stages of teaching legal discourse in “Professional Kazakh language” courses. The present study was done during the academic year 2020-2021 at the Faculty of Philology and Pedagogy, Sh. Ualikhanov Kokshetau University. “Professional Kazakh language” course took place twice a week and each class lasted 50 minutes. The participants had different ethnic backgrounds, Kazakh, Russian and Tatar. Methodology. The present study applied mixed methods to identify the effectiveness of the teaching strategies and students' performance. Data was collected from 52 volunteer participants, namely law students, both genders, of the course “Professional Kazakh language” by means of Google forms. Results. The results of the analysis showed that developing communicative skills and legal discourse for law students is considered one of the key requirements, and studying the Kazakh professional language course may provide future law specialists with necessary linguistic and communicative skills. The data collection was done through questionnaires and observation. Conclusions. The results showed that the participants perceive “Professional Kazakh language” courses to be very important for their study and future career and there seemed to be considerable motivation and interest in taking “Professional Kazakh language” courses and strengthen knowledge in the legal Kazakh language.