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Homework, being an indispensable part of learning, needs special planning and modification in line with the latest educational development. In this view, we assume that mobile devices can provide ample opportunities for students to interact and collaborate with their group-mates to enhance learning outcomes in university foreign language education. Interactive mobile homework assignments combined with individual ones can noticeably improve these outcomes from different perspectives. They engage students in communicative foreign language usage, encouraging both receptive and productive speech acts, student-to-student cooperation in learning through communication, peer-teaching, and pooling resources which promote the amplification of the learning environment through content and language sharing. On the other hand, interactive mobile homework assignments also have certain risks that may decrease the quality of learning, such as possible error exchange, a superficial approach, a switch to use of native language, and chatting, etc. Nevertheless, interactive mobile homework assignments keep students on the task for a longer period of time because they require each student’s pre-task preparation, longer oral exchanges during the “while phase” and post-task individual summary, therefore providing more practice. The study described in the article highlights the characteristics of the interactive mobile homework tasks, suggests a list of homework task types, both individual and interactive, and compares the results of their practical application in university foreign language education. The authors attempt to identify a trend in their contribution to the learning outcomes achieved by the students while completing their homework, either interactively or individually.

The article focuses on the problems of teaching foreign languages (FL) to pre-service subject (other than foreign languages) teachers and highlights their possible solutions. A sustained discontent of both university teachers and students with the outcomes of FL classes gave impetus for a systematic, detailed study of the university FL education of the target group of learners. There was an acute need to develop well-grounded guidelines for the related course objectives, its content and adequate techniques intended for the target group of learners. The authors claim that the generally accepted English for Specific Purposes (ESP) or Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) models of university FL education cannot be applied in this context for a number of reasons. A limited amount of classroom time, lack of updated teaching materials, mixed-ability classrooms, and unclear perspectives of the future application of the FL skills made the study urgent. Therefore, the teachers of the English Language Department of the Petrozavodsk State University (Russia) developed a project that is described in the article; 152 students and six teachers participated in its implementation. The objective of the project was to introduce reasonable changes into the approaches, the aims, the content, and the techniques for rational and effective FL teaching and learning in this context. The authors identified priorities of the university FL education in line with the context and the target learner characteristics. The article presents arguments in favor of the introduced changes, describes the phases of the project work, and gives details of all the constituents of the proposed curriculum. Based on the outcomes of the project, the authors conclude that it is necessary to undertake further research steps in this direction.