Social and Legal Studios

The article is devoted to the study of one of the innovative teaching methods − didactic cinquain. The term “didactic cinquain” means a piece of verse that consists of five lines written according to certain rules to a given topic. Composing a cinquain is a creative activity that requires the ability to find the most important elements in the studied material, draw conclusions and formulate them briefly; it is an attempt to express, in a concise form, their knowledge, feelings, associations and views on a particular issue, event, or subject. With the simplicity of form, cinquain is a fast and, at the same time, a powerful tool for reflection and synthesis of the educational material. The purpose of the article is to demonstrate, on specific examples, the possibility of using a cinquain during the study of legal English in foreign language classes at higher education establishments. It should be noted that besides making up a new cinquain individually, in pairs or in groups, there are many different ways to apply this method. One of them is to create a short story on a ready-made cinquain. Other techniques are adjusting and improving the existing poem; comparison of several cinquains that have one problem but express different or even opposite opinions, judgments, feelings; analysis of incomplete cinquain in order to determine the missing part (to determine the theme of the poem, based on the known four lines). The examples of the cinquains illustrate the topics “Crimes and Punishment” and “Under Arrest” which are studied in the English Professional Course at higher school. They include the concepts “crime”, “law enforcers”, “prison” and “suspects”. The expediency of using the didactic cinquain method in a foreign language class at a higher school is that it is the creative rethinking of the concepts that are being studied, the creation of a personal picture of the world in a foreign language. It contributes to the appropriation of lexical units and grammatical constructions, and thus to success in the further professional activity