Virtual mentoring of young foreign language teachers in the organization of extracurricular activities

Nizhny Novgorod State Linguistic University, Department of Methods of Teaching Foreign Languages, Pedagogy and Psychology, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia

^* Corresponding author: el.glumova2010@yandex.ru

Abstract

Modern students belonging to generations A and Z cannot imagine their life without the virtual world, so there is a need to use innovative approaches to organizing lessons and extracurricular activities in foreign languages. Digital technology plays an important role in this process, but not all teachers can quickly adapt to work in the new format. The issue is especially relevant for beginning foreign language teachers who do not have sufficient experience to effectively organize extracurricular work as an integral form of teaching foreign languages. This paper aims to consider virtual mentoring as a form of adaptation of teachers to modern digital technologies for organizing extracurricular activities of students belonging to generations A and Z. The analysis of scientific and methodological literature on this topic allowed the authors to identify a description of particular cases of the use of digital educational systems in teaching various aspects of a foreign language in the classroom and the need for the formation of digital literacy of the student. The paper clarifies how extracurricular activities can improve the students’ progress in a foreign language, proposes a form of virtual mentoring as a modern and convenient model of interaction that can increase the virtual competence of foreign language teachers, highlights and describes the features of children of generation A and Z, based on the study of which it was established the need to introduce a large number of digital technologies and the transition to a distance learning format when organizing extracurricular activities.