COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE FORMATION OF FUTURE SPECIALISTS BY MEANS OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES
Olena Oleksenko (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
Economic and social changes in life of our society have raised the demand in competitive specialists who have mastered several foreign languages. Mastering foreign languages has become an integral part of preparation of the modern specialist in any sphere. Thus communicative competence formation of future specialists by means of foreign languages is of a paramount importance nowadays. In higher educational establishments the course of foreign languages has a professionally oriented character that is why its tasks are defined by communicative and cognitive needs of students. The theoretical grounds of the present research are considered in detail by T. Kolbina [3].
At practical classes of foreign languages students have to master the basic communicative types of languages. Along with it, the dialogue speech plays the core role for introducing and working out the new material, controlling and testing students’ knowledge, skills and habits which are realized in the form of discussions and debates.
In the Law of Ukraine “About Education” the notion of competence is interpreted as dynamic combination of knowledge, skills and practical habits along with personal qualities, moral and ethical values. This combination is a result of the educative activity, and thus it defines the ability of a person to realize professional activity [2]. The acquired competence is necessary for efficient professional activity. It allows foreseeing the consequences of professional activity, and using the information.
It is known that any kind of activity consists of certain stages that presuppose orientation, cognition, transformation and evaluation. The educational activity aimed at professional competence formation depends on the external environment, visual text-books, methods of their usage, level of students’ preparation for perceiving information as well as their individual peculiarities.
According to V. Bespalko, the levels of mastering knowledge, practicing skills and habits are classified into acquaintance (recognizing objects, processes by repetitive perception of information); reproduction (copying and using information for specific purposes); productive actions (searching for new information for individual acts); creative actions (individual constructing of ways of activity) [1]. The mentioned theories give grounds for defining the algorithm of communicative competence formation by studying foreign languages. The algorithm presupposes the stages of orientation and motivation, receiving and analyzing information, transformation, evaluation and reflexivity.
At the stage of orientation and motivation the aim of the educational activity is to orientate future specialists at studying specific communicative topics, to reveal the students’ current knowledge and expectations, to form positive motivation for acquiring communicative experience. All this will form the necessary conditions for individual cognitive activity and streamline the efficient professional preparation. The didactic means of questionnaire, testing and visual links to the topic have proved to be the most efficient at this stage [4]. They help future specialists to adapt to the educative activity.
At the stage of receiving and analyzing the information future specialists are given new information as for the objects of studying for its further usage in the process of solving communicative tasks. At this stage the explanatory and illustrative methods are used, as well as reproductive ones, i.e. tasks for reproducing ways of actions after the pattern in variable situations. The explanatory and illustrative methods together with the reproductive ones define the conditions of successful creative activity of students. At this stage professional texts of different types are suggested for analysing: detailed (for picking out the exact information), review (for general understanding of the content), selective (for obtaining specific information), orientating (for pointing out the main bridge sentences) etc. Among the educational tasks which are proposed are the following: comparison of proverbs of different cultures with the corresponding explanations and illustrations, recognition of types of national cultures with the help of given descriptions, classification of national cultures under the common characteristics, analysis of internal and external displays of culture on the grounds of metaphoric parallel between culture and an iceberg etc.
Doing tasks in groups along with the team work in discussing different ways of solving tasks rouse positive feelings of empathy and approval, develop humanistic intention in communication, readiness to cooperate. Mastering theoretical and practical issues at the stage of receiving and analysing information stimulates successful realization of the acquired knowledge in practice during the stage of transformation. Its goal is to generalize and systematize the obtained knowledge on the topic as well as to work out the personal strategy of its creative application. The method of problem-solving learning at this stage is preferred. It can be combined with a heuristic one that presupposes getting gradual creative experience, mastering separate stages of solving creative tasks on the part of a learner and partial explanation of new material along with problematic questions and cognitive tasks or experiments on the part of a teacher. Future specialists are prepared already to give their own examples of proverbs and sayings related to definite national cultures, define the core notions of the communicative topics by brainstorming ideas, search and sort out information for presentations, conduct debates, debriefings, heuristic negotiations with the aim to reach consensus and solve professional problems, discuss essential professional issues with a means of “mistake made on purpose”; write business letters, resumes, annotations etc.
The final stage of evaluation and reflexivity is directed at comparison of the obtained results with the goals projected at the stage of orientation and motivation. Analysis and assessment of personal gains and gaps provoke further elaboration and improvement of the acquired skills and knowledge. Heuristic and research methods are the main ones at the reflexive and estimating stage. The research method presupposes stimulating students for individual work as for collecting facts, their systematization and analysis. The didactic means at this stage are as follows: analysis of means of communication, role play, projects preparation, sen-ken composition, self-estimation, drawing conclusions in the form of diagrams, graphs, tables, answering questions for reflection etc.
Completing such courses in foreign languages gives firm grounds for communicative competence formation of future specialists. It is revealed in their eagerness to learn and understand foreign cultures, perceive psychological, social and other cross-cultural differences. A sufficient range of communicative means, their right choice according to a particular situation as well as following the ethical norms in the process of communication defines psychological readiness of future specialists to cooperate with representatives of other cultures and thus, determines efficiency in their communicative competence.
References
- Беспалько В. П. Педагогика и прогрессивные технологии обучения / В. П. Беспалько. – М.: Педагогика, 1989. – 192 с.
- Закон України «Про освіту» [Електронний ресурс]. – Режим доступу: http:// zakonrada.gov.ua/laws/show/1060-12.
- Kolbina–SciPress Ltd, 2016. –
- Oleksenko O. Formation of Cross-Cultural Communication Experience of Future Managers / Olena Oleksenko // World Scientific News. – Poland: WSN, 2016. – № 40. – P. 108-123.
