Innovations and Traditions in Ukrainian Language Teaching at The educational Establishments of Ukraine: Cases, Models of the Future

: Language proficiency is an important skill for the XXIst century. It means that formation of Ukrainian language competency is one of the major problems of educational institutions in Ukraine. The aim of the article is to analyze the main approaches, models and methods of Ukrainian language teaching and to highlight the most effective ones that can be used to train future professionals and make them ready to operate positively in dynamic society and information culture in future. To achieve the research objectives


Introduction
Social and economic changes, the process of globalization and internationalization of education, development of information society, mobility of the labour market, increasing the social role of personality, rapid transformations of science, engineering, and information technologies all around the world require the development of national system of education in accordance with world standards and social needs.
Fluency in state language is an essential requirement for positive implementation of social and pedagogical paradigm of professional training as it enables a future specialist to carry out his/her professional activity efficiently and to gain access to scientific or cultural values of the nation.Also, high level of Ukrainian language knowledge forms conscious language behaviour of an individual, becomes a basis for his/her self-actualization, contributes to personality spiritual and intellectual development (Britsyn et al., 2021).
On the other hand, modern education is not limited to geographical boundaries.Today, under conditions of globalized educational environment many foreign students study in Ukraine and they learn Ukrainian as a foreign language.
In this context, it is necessary to study the methodology of Ukrainian language teaching and to find out effective methods to enhance communicative competency.In order to achieve this, it is necessary to analyze the existing cases and models to elaborate the methodical recommendations for the future.
Methodology of Ukrainian language teaching is comparatively young science as earlier, during the Soviet era, it used to have formal meaning (Arel, 2017(Arel, -2018)).Currently, a number of educators and methodologists pay attention towards this problem.And especially they focus on innovative approaches and models, enhancement of existing forms and methods of Ukrainian language teaching to improve students' learning outcomes and to form their Ukrainian language competency.
Modern science has some experience of development of Ukrainian language norms (Britsyn et al., 2021).At the same time, some works are devoted to introduction of innovative approaches to Ukrainian language teaching within the educational institutions in Ukraine (Bereza et al., 2021).Today we see that a Ukrainian language teacher faces the problem of searching the ways to enhance students' cognitive interest, form their positive motivation to learning, provide them with good knowledge and encourage extensive communication practice.Obviously, it is essentially to enhance the efficiency of the process of Ukrainian language teaching.And the way to do it is to implement innovative approaches and methods that are just beginning to win the commitment of Ukrainian language teachers at the educational establishments in Ukraine.

Research Problem
According to Czerkawski and Berti (2020) language proficiency and oral communication are important skills for the XXIst century as they give students not only vocabulary and grammatical knowledge but help them navigate complex realities, build problem-solving, critical thinking, and digital literacy.Kessler (2018) and Suwartono et al. (2022) emphrasize that current trends and models used for language teaching are not enough efficient and we need to improve language teaching and learning practices to form higher level of language competency among students.Consequently, the educational institutions should design new models and apply innovative methods to enhance Ukrainian language teaching and to prepare todays' students to future activity.

Research Focus
Methodology of Ukrainian language teaching as a topic of pedagogical science is oriented towards the process of teaching itself, reveals the rules of language acquisition, determines and motivates the procedures of knowledge transfer from a teacher to students, suggests the most effective teaching methods (Suwartono et al., 2022).
Analyzing the methodology of teaching as a pedagogical discipline, we can distinguish its four aspects: existing of foreign language teaching methodology within pedagogy, active functioning of methodology teaching language as a foreign one, emergence of methodology of teaching of Ukrainian as a foreign language (Bereza et al., 2021;Tsurkan et al., 2021).
The term of approach is an important category describing methodology.Approach reflects the organization of educational process and comprises the methods, forms and principles of teaching (Upadhyay, 2020).
At the same time, model is a scheme that presents the structure and actions involved in the process.The main purpose of model is to show the functionality of the process or phenomenon.Pedagogical model is a system of principles, methods, and content within the educational process that is organized to achieve a pedagogical intention (Yassin, 2019).From pedagogical point of view, an approach is interpreted as a basis for designing the model.
According to Goroshkina (2020), cognitive approach is very significant for teaching Ukrainian.This approach emphasizes the importance of pro-active role of a student that defines a learner as a subject of the educational process.Using cognitive approach, a teacher gets aware of individual differences between students.First of all, a teacher must determine what exactly a student knows, and then the educational program can be introduced that refers to determination of the level of learners' readiness to acquire the language material.Consequently, cognitive approach to language teaching enables a teacher to realize how to educate students to adapt learning activity to their needs and abilities.Simultenously, a teacher considers cognitive parameters like intellectual abilities (speed perception, verbal expression, speed of interpretation, type of thinking, memory quality) and cognitive characteristics (reliance, cognitive flexibility, cognitive speed, concentration, generalization, automation, style of organizing information, motivation) of students to select illustrative material and exercises and organize the educational process efficiently.
Cognitive approach suggests the following tasks for a language teacher (Wang, 2021) o Teach students to perceive the input information adequately.Competency-based approach is an efficient teaching tool used for personality development and oriented towards active participation of a student in the educational process (Boukhentache, 2020).This approach is aimed at enhancement of learners' competencies that are related to abilities for solving problems and, therefore, they require high level of knowledge acquisition, intensive intellectual activity, experience, creative skills (Goroshkina, 2020).
Competency is explained as readiness to certain activity and it demand a student to understand, demonstrate, evaluate, use, prove, realize, choose, substantiate, form, and develop the material he/she learnt.Competency-based methodology is oriented towards enhancement of thinking activity (creativity, criticism, ability to solve problems and formulate own statements), improvement of communicative actions (speaking and communicative cooperation), implementation of instruments (innovative technologies), building of responsibility to act as an active and competent person (Glaesser, 2019).Also, competency-based approach to Ukrainian language teaching considers classical didactic principles like continuity, reflexive character, dialogue interaction, system orientation, situational content, creativity, humanization, individual educational trajectory, individual experience, intersubject integration, upbringing (Savchenko & Lokshyna, 2020).According to Diachenko and Usatyi (2021), competency-based approach is characterized by active participation of students, their positive independence in the educational process and ability to plan their learning activity, qualitative content, making the sense of values of educational process.
Main task of competency-based approach is not only to acquire good knowledge of Ukrainian language, but to for the ability to use this knowledge in every day and future professional activity (Goroshkina, 2020).A Ukrainian language teacher carries out other tasks in the classroom.They include (Goroshkina, 2020;Diachenko & Usatyi, 2021;Savchenko & Lokshyna, 2020;Glaesser, 2019) According to Aleksandrovych and Malynka (2020), person-centered approach requires pedagogical interaction and the ability to conduct a dialogue between participants of the educational process.Personal-centered approach is aimed at development of students' language skills.Positive interaction between a teacher and a student on the basis of dialogue increases the results of language teaching and contributes to students' personality self-actualization significantly.Moreover, this approach helps learners enhance creative skills, form valuable attitudes, and orient towards communicative activity.
Person-centered approach to Ukrainian language teaching means creation of optimal conditions for comprehensive development of student's personality considering his/her individual characteristics, needs and interests on the principles of dignity, priority of moral values, harmonization with the society through practical activity (Kobernyk & Osadchenko, 2019).
Accordingly, person-centered approach refers to subject-subject interaction between a student and a teacher which aims at acquisition of knowledge, building of skills and abilities as a tool for personality development and formation of students' life competencies.Aleksandrovych and Malynka (2020) as well as Kobernyk and Osadchenko (2019) outline the tasks for a Ukrainian language teacher in the process of implementation of person-centered approach: o Develop empathy as a determinant of a teacher's personality.Communicative approach deals with active communicative cooperation to practice language skills (reading, speaking, writing, and listening comprehension) and further use them in different situations (Berezenko et al., 2022).
The tasks of a Ukrainian language teacher in the process of implementation of communicative approach are the following (Rudiuk, 2021): o Create educational environment where learners can participate actively; o Apply meaningful exercises in the Ukrainian language classroom; o Encourage communication practice; o Teach students to use Ukrainian language for exchange of ideas; o Focus on the choice of words and word combinations.
To implement a certain model, a teacher uses a wide range of teaching methods both traditional and innovative (Ushakova et al., 2022;Savchuk et al., 2019;Yuzyk et al., 2019).
Traditional teaching methods are based on information and illustrative activity of a teacher.They imply a teacher uses verbal tools like storytelling, demonstration of educational material, and lecture (Ushakova et al., 2022).At the same time students are involved in reproductive activity.Traditional methods are usually used to teach theoretical material.
But currently, innovative methods become more popular.Pedagogical innovation means the process of creation, spreading, and use of new means and tools for solving the existing pedagogical problems.Innovative methods require active participation of a student, refocusing of the educational process from a teacher to a student, support of students in organization of independent learning activity, providing of systematic feedback between a teacher and students, wide use of information and communication technologies (ICT) (Savchuk et al., 2019;Yuzyk et al., 2019).Innovations in language teaching refer to transformations, novelty, modification and introduction of something new (Upadhyay, 2020).
The application of efficient models and methods in Ukrainian language teaching is a necessary condition to enhance the level of students' communicative competency and prepares them to language activity.©Copyright 2022 by the author(s) This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Research Aim and Research Questions
The purpose of the article is to analyze innovative and traditional models of Ukrainian language teaching at the educational establishments in Ukraine and outline the most effective methods to improve the educational process and to build the high level of Ukrainian language competency among students.
The article objectives are the following: • to carry out an open survey among teachers in Ukrainian educational establishments and to distinguish the approaches and models used for Ukrainian language teaching; • to analyze traditional and innovative methods implemented within four models of Ukrainian language teaching on the basis of students and teachers survey; • to highlight the most efficient methods to organize the process of Ukrainian language teaching at the educational establishments in Ukraine that can be applicable in the future and to describe their positive features.

General Background
Studying the problem, we used a number of theoretical methods (scientific literature review, synthesis of research results on the problems of Ukrainian language teaching and generalization of pedagogical theories and approaches).Also, in the article we employed the empirical research methods including pedagogical observation and open survey to collect quantitative data on the problem.To process the results, we applied the methods of mathematical analysis and statutory interpretation of students' learning outcomes.

Sample / Participants / Group
The pedagogical experiment involves 108 Ukrainian language teachers, 16 methodologist of Ukrainian language departments of different educational institutions and 245 students who study in Ukraine.We conducted the questionnaire of teachers, methodologists and students through Google forms.Students' learning outcomes were analyzed on the basis of registers and examination papers.All the respondents participated in the experiment voluntarily.We informed them about the survey objectives and procedures in details.

Instrument and Procedures
The teachers and methodologists were interviewed through Google forms to get quantitative and qualitative data on the pedagogical problem.The questions referred to the main approaches and models used for Ukrainian language teaching at the educational institutions.Also, the pedagogical staff were asked to describe traditional and innovative methods they apply.The questionnaire included the following questions: ✓ What is the length of your teaching experience?✓ What type of educational institution do you work in (primary, secondary or higher)?✓ What category of students do you work with?✓ What approach do use while teaching Ukrainian?✓ What traditional methods do you apply in the process of Ukrainian language teaching?We analyzed the data obtained during the pedagogical experiment very carefully to understand the process of Ukrainian language teaching at the educational institutions in Ukraine in details.The answers of teachers, methodologists and students showed what approaches and models are used in the educational process and it gave us a possibility to outline traditional and innovative teaching methods.We presented our findings in the following sections.

Research Results
The results of pedagogical experiment demonstrate that teachers and methodologists apply four different models of Ukrainian languages teaching.They are differentiated on the basis of methodological approach.They concern cognitive approach, competency-based approach, person-centered approach, and communicative approach.
Figure 1 shows that person-centered approach is the most widespread among teachers and methodologists that is 32,4% and 30,9 % respectively.Also, the high rate of teachers (27,9 %) and methodologists (24,6 %) use competency-based approach.However, at the same time, communicative and cognitive approaches are less popular.17,3 % of teachers and 20,7 % of methodologists use communicative approach while teaching Ukrainian, and 9,9 % of teachers and 13,0 % methodologists apply cognitive approach to improve the process of Ukrainian language teaching.It is necessary to admit that 12,5 % of teachers and 10,8 % methodologists combine different approaches to enhance the efficiency of Ukrainian language teaching.These findings show that teachers who are directly related to practical pedagogical activity use person-centered and competency-based approaches most of all.Also, they tend to combine approaches more often.communicative approaches.It is necessary to admit that methodologists combine different approaches quite less often than teachers.

The use of Methodological Approaches in the Process of Ukrainian Language Teaching at the Educational Institutions in Ukraine
Source: author's own development.
The efficiency of each model depends on the methods used for Ukrainian language teaching.We surveyed teachers', methodologists', and students' attitudes towards the organization of Ukrainian language lessons to analyze the methods and to outline the most efficient ones.Table 1 shows that teachers use the following traditional methods in the process of Ukrainian language teaching: oral explanation, conversation, generalization of material, discussion, mutual work, storytelling, and watching video.Methodologists apply observation of students, conversation, demonstration, explanation, discussion, and mutual work.At the same time students prefer when teachers use the following methods during Ukrainian language lessons: conversation, demonstration, watching video, discussion, and lecture.The results show that innovative methods are widely used in the proccess of Ukrainian language teaching.Also, we found that the number of innovative methods is significantly larger compared with traditional ones (Table 2).Consequetly, teachers use the following innovative methods: heuristic questionarre, group discussion, situational method, use of ICT, conference of videoconference, lexical games, brainstorming, communicative exercises for development of writing skills, work with text and after-text interactive exercises, and role game.Methodologists suggest the following innovative methods for lessons plans: heuristics questionnaire, ice-breaking exercise, group discussion, situational method, use of ICT, lexical games, dialogue-making, independent work, role games, and pair work.In comparison, students prefer the following innovative methods used during Ukrainian language lessons: use of ICT, brainstorming, role game, pair work, innovative lecture, and situational method.Then we analyzed students performance and assessed their level Ukrainian language competency.The findings show that traditional and innovative methods are effective and they lead to the increase of level of Ukrainian language competency among students.But we discovered that the efficiency of innovative methods for formation of Ukrainian language competency is slightly higher.Students show improved outcomes when they attended the lessons where innovative methods of Ukrainian language teaching were used.Table 3 presents the analysis of students' performance based on the data of register and examination papers.

Discussion
The scientific literature review and the findings of pedagogical experiment conducted at the educational institutions show that all four models are effective in the process of Ukrainian language teaching.At the same time, the model based on the cognitive approach is less preferred among teachers and methodologists.Moreover, students do not like to do the tasks designed with the use of cognitive approach.This leads to the fact that students show lower performance when a teacher applied cognitive approach.Students prefer active and interactive tasks when they can be an equal participant of the educational process.So they can enhance the level of Ukrainian language competency and form skills related to language activity like decision-making, problem solving, critical thinking, information literacy, management, leadership, etc.
In addition, teachers and methodologists do not use a single approach.Currently, the educational process requires a combination of different approaches to make the learning effective, interesting, and fascinating.
Besides, we can state that the use of innovative methods of Ukrainian language teaching show slightly higher efficiency of the educational process.It gives us a possibility to claim that innovative methods lead to improvement of Ukrainian language competency among students.Thus, modern Ukrainian language lesson requires a teacher to design lesson plan more thoroughly with the use of innovative methods.These, in return, suggest development of new tasks, creation of collective work, use of ICT and growing the role of a student in the learning process (Kessler, 2018;Aleksandrovych & Malynka, 2020).
Use of innovative methods and inclusion them into effective model of Ukrainian language teaching improves the quality of presentation of educational material and increases students' performance, enhances their motivation to learning activity, creates conditions for better interaction between a teacher and students.
Innovative methods are oriented towards development of creativity, independent problemsolving and decision-making, increase intellectual abilities, improvement of cognitive activity (Czerkawski & Berti, 2020;Savchuk et al., 2019).Also, they create the conditions for building of language competency and formation of skills to solve every day and professional tasks by means of the Ukrainian language.Today, effective language lesson requires a teacher to conduct a creative search, implement new methods, and apply new ways to present information.
To improve the process of Ukrainian language teaching at the educational institutions and to prepare students to language activity, teachers must comply with the following recommendations: • Realize that language is an essential component of the society and emphasize this statement to students regularly; • Consider students' needs, interests, skills, intellectual abilities and cognitive characteristics while designing a lesson plan or developing new educational materials; • Focus on formation of strong language skills among students, concentrate on development of speaking, reading, writing, listening comprehension skills; • Combine approaches and models in the process of Ukrainian language teaching to achieve the higher efficiency; • Build the educational process on the principles of dialogue because every student is a researcher and he/she can get new knowledge independently; • Lesson should be not only educational or informative but interesting and interactive; • Change types of activities during the lesson and observe students' attitudes and interests towards activities chosen; • Encourage development and improvement of learners' cognitive activity; • Provide communicative orientation of Ukrainian language lessons; Implement games as important interactive exercise for development cognitive interest, preparation of students to make conclusions; games form decision-making skills, practice future professional activity on real situations.Games help passive students be actively involved in the learning process.A teacher should know how to use lexical, didactical games, and role games at the different stages of the lesson.
Improve students' flexibility of thinking via language tools; ©Copyright 2022 by the author(s) This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Use ICT as they help to enhance the quality of language lesson, encourage research, analytical, and creative skills of students.
Focus on stimulation creativity while doing educational tasks; Maintain interest and enhance inner motivation to learning activity and learning the Ukrainian language in particular; Creative tasks should stimulate intellectual activity, analysis, generalization, imagination, prediction, search, decision making, planning, realization of own actions, and their evaluation; Revise material using creative and interactive tasks; Apply the principles of differentiation and individualization of teaching Develop non-standard lessons like lesson conference or videoconference, briefing, round table, interviewing, or role play; Use electronic textbooks instead of traditional ones; Watch special videos devoted to some lesson topics and design after-watching exercise to improve communicative skills; Use project-based technology that is related to interactive tasks that combine game, cognitive and communicative activity.Project-based technology considers student's own interests and educational needs, it helps to improve existing skills and abilities, improves motivation to learning activity.This technology prepares students to future professional activity and forms decision-making, problem solving, planning, and management skills; A teacher must be aware that the lesson cannot be overloaded with information as it is very difficult for students to absorb it and acquire good knowledge; Accept that upbringing is an essential mission of the educational process and focus on preparation of students as socially active personalities who are ready to act in modern dynamic life and information culture, who can cope with future challenges; Prepare students to learn continuously; Teach students to apply peer control and prepare them to evaluate their communicative competency.
Therefore, at the modern stage of development of education in Ukraine, Ukrainian language teaching becomes more significant and requires the development of innovative approaches, models and methods.This fact must be considered by Ukrainian language teachers and methodologists to enhance the efficiency of educational process and to form the higher level of Ukrainian language competency among students.These recommendations must be regarded when educational institutions design new educational programs and implement innovative methods within the educational process.

Conclusions and Implications
The analysis of the Ukrainian language teaching at the educational institutions in Ukraine showed that teachers and methodologists should concentrate on combination of different approaches and models to enhance the efficiency.Also, pedagogical staff should apply innovative methods more widely to form higher level of Ukrainian language competency among students.
The results revealed that four different models of Ukrainian language teaching are used.The model with the use of cognitive approach stresses the importance of pro-active role of students and defines a learner as an equal player of the educational process.In this approach, a teacher gets aware of individual differences between students.The model with the use of competency-based approach is used to enhance of learners' competencies that are related to problem solving abilities and high level of knowledge acquisition, intensive intellectual activity, language use experience, and creativity.The model with the use of person-centered approach demands the creation of positive conditions for pedagogical interaction or a dialogue between a teacher and students.This approach helps students improve creative skills, form valuable attitudes towards communicative activity.The model with the use of communicative approach concerns active communicative cooperation to practice essential language skills and prepares students to use them in every day and professional situations in the future.The findings show that person-centered and competency-based approaches are the most widespread among teachers and methodologists but currently they also tend to combine different approaches in the process of Ukrainian language teaching.Besides, we found that two groups of teaching methods are applied: traditional and innovative.Teachers usually use the following traditional methods in the process of Ukrainian language teaching: oral explanation, conversation, generalization of material, discussion, mutual work, storytelling, and watching video.Methodologists employ observation of students, conversation, demonstration, explanation, discussion, and mutual work.But students point that conversation, demonstration, watching video, discussion, and lecture are the most effective.
The experiment demonstrated that the number of innovative methods is significantly larger compared with traditional ones.Teachers use heuristic questionarre, group discussion, situational method, ICT, conference of videoconference, lexical games, brainstorming, communicative exercises for development of writing skills, work with text and after-text interactive exercises, and role game.Methodologists suggest using heuristics questionnaire, ice-breaking exercise, group discussion, situational method, ICT, lexical games, dialogue-making, independent work, role games, and pair work.At the same time students prefer ICT, brainstorming, role game, pair work, innovative lecture, and situational method.
The analysis of students performance showed that traditional and innovative methods are effective and their use lead to the increase of level of Ukrainian language competency among students.But the efficiency of innovative methods is slightly higher.Students improved their learning outcomes when they teachers applied innovative methods of Ukrainian language teaching widely.
We came to the conclusion that the educational process requires a combination of different approaches to make the learning effective, interesting, and motivating.One of the main requirement to teachers and methodologists of educational institutions in Ukraine is to apply innovative methods more extensively as they help to enhance Ukrainian language competency among students and prepare them to language activities in every day and professional situations.
The findings show that innovative methods used for Ukrainian language teaching improve the quality of presentation of educational material, increase students' performance, enhance their motivation to learning activity, create conditions for better pedagogical interaction.Innovative methods help to develop creativity, to form independent problem-solving and decision-making, to increase intellectual abilities, and to improv cognitive activity among students.The study found that innovative methods are the most effective in the process of Ukrainian language teaching and their extensive application should considered while developing new educational programs and designing lesson plans of the new standard.
©Copyright 2022 by the author(s) This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

✓
©Copyright 2022 by the author(s) This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.What innovative methods do you use? ✓ Do traditional and innovative teaching methods have different pedagogical efficiency?✓ How often do you change types of activities at the lesson?✓ How often do you use textbook?✓ Do you use ICT?If yes, what are they?✓ How do you assess students' learning outcomes?Are they making progress?✓ What challenges do you face while teaching Ukrainian?The students were also asked the questions on the organization of the process of Ukrainian language teaching.Students survey contained the following questions: ✓ How long have you studied the Ukrainian language?✓ Do you like your Ukrainian language lessons?✓ What exercises do you usually do in the Ukrainian language classroom?✓ How often do you use textbooks while learning Ukrainian?✓ How often does your teacher change types of activities during the lesson?✓ Do you use ICT while learning Ukrainian?✓ What difficulties do you meet while learning Ukrainian?✓ How do you assess your performance?Do you receive higher grades?✓ Can you speak/write Ukrainian fluently?Data Analysis Methodologists, who deal with theoretical pedagogical activity and development of methodical guidelines and teaching materials, prefer to use person-centered, competency-based and ©Copyright 2022 by the author(s) This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. :

: o
Develop critical thinking of students; o Encourage students' cognitive activity development and improvement; o Use of research methods to explain new material and to make students to come to accurate conclusions themselves; o Ensure practical orientation of the educational process; o Adapt the language material to students' needs and abilities; o Motivate students to active learning using games, practical activity, and creative skills; o Form culture of interpersonal communication; o Aim students to achieve high learning outcomes; o Form students' ability to learn continuously.

o
Develop student's individual cognitive skills; o Identify, initiate, and use individual communicative experience of students during the educational process; ©Copyright 2022 by the author(s) This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.o Enable student to evaluate his/her communicative competency; o Help learners to determine and realize themselves; o Form learner's language culture to build every day and future professional life productively; o Assess the level of student's education; o Analyze the level of reading, speaking, writing, and listening comprehension skills; o Evaluate the level of general educational skills like definition of the purpose, planning, and summarizing;

Table 1
Analysis of Traditional Methods Used in the Process of Ukrainian Language Teaching (Based on the Open Survey)

Table 2
Analysis of Innovative Methods Used in the Process of Ukrainian Language Teaching (Based on the Open Survey)

Table 3
Analysis of Students' Performance (Based on the Data of Registers and Examination Papers)