DEVELOPING LOWER- AND HIGHER-ORDER COGNITIVE SKILLS IN ELT Радислав Мильруд

Радислав Петрович Мильруд - доктор педагогических наук, профессор кафедры международной профессиональной и научной коммуникации Тамбовского государственного технического университета, заслуженный работник высшей школы, автор УМК “Звездный английский“. Session title: Developing lower- and higher-order cognitive skills in ELT The subject of developing lower- and higher-order cognitive skills in language learners has been gaining momentum for quite a while. ELT researchers and teaching practitioners are getting increasingly aware of the need to develop cognitive skills as part of learners' communicative competence. Following Lev Vygotsky's ideas, language and thought are inseparable cognitive mechanisms. Communicative competence is void without the skills of generating ideas. The problem is that too much attention is being given in the classrooms world-wide to lower-order cognitive skills focusing on processing pinpointed information in the text. Conversely, higher- order cognitive skills, i.e. ability fo gener