International foreign language communication has become an essential component of professional activity of specialists. Therefore, foreign language training should be profession-oriented. Thus, being an indispensable component of general education, foreign language is an integral part of a qualitative vocational education. In terms of competence-oriented approach professional competences of engineering specialists concerning a foreign language, among which a communicative competence is a leading one, are basic competences and integrate common cultural, intellectual, social and professional qualities of a personality providing the effective establishment of business contacts, the solution of specific professional tasks. Profession-oriented approach in teaching foreign languages allows to obviate the entire set of psychological, linguistic and social difficulties related to the formation of the personality of a student as an independent thinker, a manager of their own learning process capable of creativity and innovations [4].
Hence, there is a need to form a personality of a student through the closest connection between the foreign language and specialized disciplines and understanding by the learners the applied purpose of foreign language.
Today foreign language as a subject is increasingly becoming a language for the profession and is intended to ensure the readiness of future specialists for adaptation and self-determination in the world of new information technologies, for long-life education and personal development. Foreign language is an organic component of such training. The knowledge of it broadens the professional context of specialists, makes their professional field wider due to availability of foreign information. Social order is expressed in the prestige of the knowledge of a foreign language, in the students´ priorities, thereby activating the pragmatic aspects of foreign language learning. The pragmatic approach to the study of foreign languages turns the researchers to Hutchinson and Waters´s theory, which focuses on the following conceptual principles of language learning for specific purposes:
-
determination of learning objective becomes a constitutive factor in the process of profession-oriented foreign language learning. T. Hutchinson said: «Tell me, why you need English and I´ll tell you what English you need»;
-
analysis of the learners´ needs is a starting point in the construction of profession-oriented courses of training the language of profession;
-
language variations and registers become the basis for the language of specific context since the analysis of linguistic characteristics of particular professional areas has revealed no significant differences between the language for special purposes and the basic language;
-
language for special purposes is described as a «limited language» used in the situations of professional communication, around which a special vocation-oriented course is constructed [3].
Communicative needs of the profession in turn necessitate the mastering of the communicative competence. Communicative competence as a pedagogical category is characterized by such features as: deep professional knowledge of the individual for successful professional activity, awareness of the personal meanings and values of professional knowledge for the practical and professional activities; awareness of the algorithm for the solution of professional problems, creative approach to any sort of activity, manifestation of tolerance in situations of professional communication [5].
It is obvious that the professional level of communicative competence makes an individual a highly developed personality, improves their social mobility and economic freedom, allows them to enter an open information space [2].
Thus, in line with mentioned above communicative competence of university students is considered by us as the formation of an integrated personality of system organization and complex structure and having a set of intercultural, linguistic and didactic, discourse, and interpersonal communication skills and knowledge, which are based on the concept of the development of a linguistic personality capable of productive communication, ready for the dialogue.
The typological traits of the linguistic personality of the communicative, democratic type, according to Vorozhbitova A.A. are: the desire for bilateral subject-subject relations, the achievement of consensus, the constructive dialogue [1]. The principle of foreign language profilization determines the content of vocation-oriented foreign language training as a complete, complex and at the same time integrative process of the formation of a specialist as a linguistic personality with professional foreign language and communicative competence.
Considering the fact that the learning process is a long-life process high school is to prepare future specialists to work independently, motivate them for further self-promotion in the professional space using for this purpose an effective tool - the knowledge of foreign languages.
References
-
Vorozhbitova, A.A. Synergetic Aspect of Higher Education in the Context of Linguistic and Rhetorical Approach // High School Bulletin. - 1999. - №2 - Р. 22-26.
-
Isaeva T.E. Classification of Professional and Personal Competences of University Teachers // Pedagogy. - 2006. - №9 - Р. 55-60.
-
Krupchenko A.K. Formation of Professional Linguistic Didactics As a Theoretical and Methodological Problem in Professional Education // Abstract of a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences. - M., 2007. - Р. 46.
-
Slesarenko I.V. Objectives of Language Training in Modern Technical University // Higher Education in Russia. - 2011. - №11. - Р. 151.
- Hutorskoy A.V. Key Competences: Formation Technologies // People´s Education. - 2003. - № 5. - Р. 55-61.