The demands on future aviation specialists working in extreme conditions to solve problems efficiently emphasize the need to use new approaches in their professional training. Although it is crucial to focus on the training of pilot judgmental skills, there is a serious lack of research in this area. This article will define the effect of teaching critical thinking skills to student pilots in the framework of Aviation English. 42 first year student pilots took part in the study, divided into a control group and an experimental group of equal numbers. Those participating in this study were chosen based on their level of English proficiency and critical thinking skills, age, and gender. In both groups the same content of Aviation English material which corresponded fully to the syllabus was taught. In the experimental group the teacher focused on developing critical thinking skills through special techniques in addition to the Aviation English material. The findings of this study show that focusing on the teaching of critical thinking skills in the experimental group resulted in a significant increase in their scores on the critical thinking questionnaire as compared to the control group.

Motivation plays an important role in language acquisition. The article highlights the necessity of student pilots’ motivation in learning English. The research sheds light on the underlying factors of motivation in learning aviation English. The concept “motivation” was analyzed in the article. The factors of influence on students’ motivation were grouped into three categories: how teacher’s activity influences the educational process; how students’ activity influences the educational process; how organization of the educational process influences quality of studying. The research focused on studying pilots’ motivation to learn aviation English. The participants of the experiment were 247 people, among them third- and fourth-year student pilots of the Flight Academy of the National Aviation University (Kropyvnytskyi, Ukraine), third- and fourth-year student pilots of the Kharkiv Air Force University named after I. M. Kozhedub (Kharkiv,Ukraine), flight instructors and pilots of aviation company “URGA” (Kropyvnytskyi, Ukraine). The reason behind this division was to test motivation, to define the key factors and motives of pilots’ motivation to learn aviation English at flight training institutions; to trace the dynamics of changes taking place in the training of students from the third to the fourth year of studying. Data were collected by giving student pilots open-ended questionnaires, which comprise 3 blocks of the underlying factors of motivation to learn aviation English. After that a statistical analysis was conducted which showed a variation in the results between the groups of respondents; it allowed to define a variety of factors influencing students’ motivation. Each factor was assessed on the 7-point evaluation scale. The number of points received for each factor was summed up and divided by the total number of respondents. The interpretation of received results has been presented in the paper.

The article deals with main aspects of teaching Academic English for PhD students. This discipline belongs to the list of obligatory academic disciplines according to the third (educational and scientific level of higher education). English for Academic Purposes (EAP) is considered to be a part of English for Specific Purposes (ESP). In designing the course, we used the course design model by A. Gillett and L. Wray where the particular attention is paid to the students’ needs. The goal of studying the discipline Academic English is the formation of English-language communicative competence for effective research activities of PhD students. The main forms of education are practical classes and independent work. During the practical classes, the following teaching methods are used: a reproductive method; interactive methods; a method of collaborative learning; a problematic method; a heuristic method; a research method; role playing; a project method; preparation and writing of scientific papers. The particular attention is paid to the method of collaborative learning, which helps to foster critical thinking skills, enhances the ability to learn, and provides the informal setting. Key words: Academic English, EAP, academic writing, Doctor of Philosophy, PhD students, PhD training, collaborative learning, linguistic competences.

The purpose of this study is to disclose the notion of critical thinking and define the level of critical thinking skills of first year student pilots of Flight Academy of the National Aviation University (Kropyvnytskyy, Ukraine). In the article critical thinking skills are understood as the ability to process the information, to analyze and evaluate it; the abilities of reasoning, synthesizing, observation and reflection. The issue of developing critical thinking skills is of special importance for future pilots as they are responsible for making decisions during the flight. This paper proposes that critical thinking can and should be developed from the first year of higher education in order for students to cope with their future studies and to be of most use to future employers. To evaluate the critical thinking skills the group of 72 first year student pilots was formed. They were given the critical thinking questionnaire which defines such critical thinking skills as analysis, inference, evaluation, inductive reasoning, and deductive reasoning. Our findings have proved the necessity to develop these critical thinking skills of first year student pilots.

The article traces the history of the packing of university medical collections during the so-called “golden age” of high school museum affairs – from the end of the XVIIIth century – until the First World War and the importance of such components of the university's cultural heritage. The methodology of the article is a set of scientific principles, general scientific and special historical methods. Scientific novelty. In Ukrainian historiography this issue is considered in a comprehensive way for the first time. Conclusions. Researchers often analyze universities through the prism of their defining educational and research function. Such groupings of medical type have their genesis of creation. It had been developing parallel with the transformation of universities. Teachers of Lviv University accumulated the first medical collections in Ukrainian higher education institutions in the late XVIIIth century. In the XIX century, as part of creating a classical education system in the territories that were part of the Russian and Austrian empires, teachers of the mentioned Lviv, Kharkiv, Kyiv and Novorossiysk universities also actively have been forming medical collections. It was an essential basis for organizing the research process or its result. Nowadays, these accumulated collections must be considered in the context of their cultural significance. It dramatically increases their chances of survival in the future.