Bessonova E.V., Kirillova I.K., Tarabarina YU.A.
PREPARATION TECHNIQUE FOR WRITING ESSAYS AT INTERNATIONAL EXAMS IN ENGLISH ^{[№ 1 ' 2020]}
Today experts with a high level of proficiency in a foreign language are considered in demand in the labour market. The level of foreign language proficiency is confirmed by a high test result of international exams in a foreign language. The essay is a mandatory part of international English language exams such as TOEFL, IELTS, and Cambridge Advanced English. We examined the requirements and assessment criteria for the essay writing exam task. The task assesses the level of speech skills formation necessary to create your own pieces of writing in a foreign language.
As part of the research, we developed a technology for teaching writing based on a product-oriented approach. According to the technology we have identified the following stages of text production: task orientation, text planning, text writing, and text self-editing. We have also proposed a set of exercises aimed at developing following skills: task understanding, formulating the author’s point of view and its proving with relevant examples, planning a cohesive and coherent text, text division into paragraphs, highlighting of the paragraph’s main idea, development of the idea in the text, expressing ideas in the text logically in accordance with the rhetorical structure of English essay, usage of lexical cohesive means, text self-editing.
This technology was tested during experimental training; its results prove the effectiveness of the proposed technology for teaching essay writing according to international English language exams requirements.

Kirillova I.K., Tarabarina YU.A.
TEACHING WRITING FOR INTERNATIONAL EXAMS PREPARATION ^{[№ 4 ' 2019]}
The analysis of written assignments carried out by junior students of non-linguistic specialties revealed an insufficient level of foreign language writing skills formation. The students faced the following challenges during writing the essays: difficulties in text organization and rhetorical structure, lack of cohesion and coherence, difficulties in the choice of relevant information for argumentation, lack of vocabulary.
We conducted a study of teaching essay writing skills preparing junior students of non-linguistic specialties for international English examinations. We used a product writing approach based on the text model analysis. It allows to know examination requirements for rhetorical structure of the text and lexical and grammatical resources needed to write an essay. To improve writing skills formation we developed a complex of exercises aimed at teaching writing ‘agree-or-disagree’ type of an examination essay. The developed complex presents a hierarchy of writing text process stages: task orientation, text planning, text writing, and text self-editing. The results of the conducted teaching experiment confirmed the effectiveness of the developed complex of exercises.