The sociocultural conditions of the modern global world determine and correlate the goals of the Russian higher education. Many issues of the higher education related to the globalization process are being updated. New problems are being acquired by the integration processes in the context of linguistics, culture, sociology, psychology and pedagogy. The relevance of studying the issues of higher education in Russian universities opens new perspectives in determining the peculiarities of the educational process organization in the polylingual educational environment. With the basic humanistic principles as a priority, we take into account the specificity of the person-oriented technologies of modern pedagogy. In fact, the trends in the structure of the higher education represent a huge freedom for the educator to choose and implement new approaches, methods, tools to promote the formation of communicative (bilingual), sociocultural, intercultural, professional competencies and the development of student’s creative professional activity. It is important to note that the main mission of the modern university is not the only formation of a personality with certain competencies (according to the current educational standards), but also the development of potential individual characteristics of students in a multicultural educational environment [2].
We are inclined to think that teaching the foreign-language professionally-oriented communication in the polylingual educational environment is justified by the need to study the psychological, pedagogical, social, philological, and cultural factors in the educational process at the University. To expand the notion of “polylingual educational environment at the university” we are to justify teaching foreign-language professionally-oriented communication as a key educational strategy for activating the professional and cultural development of students in the multicultural educational environment.
The theoretical, methodological background of our scientific project is competence, culture and personality-oriented approaches. Studying the peculiarities of teaching the foreign-language professionally-oriented communication in the context of the polylingual educational environment is also important to present different research positions of the scientists. In modern pedagogy the concepts “environment” and “educational environment” are relevant. The researchers present it as the life conditions of a person, his surrounding; the unity of people connected by the these conditions and activities; the social space surrounding the person, the area of the individual’s activity, his immediate development in actions: his social and personal life, the experience of communication, the influence of the media, etc. [6].
M.B. Krylov understands the educational environment as part of the socio-cultural space where different educational processes and their components are interacted, in which the learner joins cultural ties with the society, acquires the experience of independent cultural activity [3]. G.Yu. Belyaev studies the educational environment as an “educational process environment” of a particular educational institution, modeled by the pedagogical activity of teachers and the administrative managers of the institution [1]. Thus, according to the researchers’ opinion, the educational environment is interpreted as a set of various conditions. This is a combination of social, cultural, as well as specially organized psychological and pedagogical conditions, as a result of the interaction of which the individual is formed as a personality. The educational environment is a pedagogically organized system of conditions, influences and opportunities for satisfying the hierarchical complex of the needs of the individual and the transformation of these needs into vital values. Using all the opportunities ensures the student’s active position in the educational process and personal self- development [5]. This creates conditions for the disclosure of the interests and abilities, the creative potential of students, further contributing to the satisfaction of their individual needs. This determines the choice and the use of educational technologies in accordance with the peculiarities of trainees. Having analyzed a number of scientific ideas and views on the stated problems, we tried to present our own ideological interpretation of the concept “polylingual educational environment”, which, undoubtedly, is connected with the further questions of forming a flexible and system of methodological support in higher education processes. The results of the research identified the necessity of developing the new organizational and methodological strategies that contribute to the communicative, sociocultural, personal and professional development of trainees in multicultural environment. The polylingual educational environment at the university is an educational environment that is defined for the learner with communicative, socio-cultural, intercultural, psycho-pedagogical, organizational and methodological conditions that ensure the student’s personal and potentially professional development in a multicultural environment. In our study, we consider the bilingual (polylingual) educational environment as a value, as a condition and as a means of forming the communicative (bilingual), cultural, sociocultural, intercultural and, surely, professional competencies of the future specialists in the professionally oriented communicative educational activity at the university.
In our study, we also identified the characteristic features of learning in the polylingual educational environment:
- Purposefulness in implementing the cultural and educational content of the learning process: taking into account, directly, the nature of the bilingual / polylingual environment in the university as a phenomenon, the development of the content of learning as a process and a result of social and cultural factors, having a shaping impact on the student’ personality;
- Activation of professional and cultural development of students: the result of bilingual person-to-person interaction in the educational process (at the level of participants in the interaction, institutions, programs, organizational and methodological support of the learning process);
- Organizational and methodological integration of the educational process: the relationship between the resource and methodological organization of the educational process, including teachers, students, managers, social and business partners, with the support of various factors conditioned by the multicultural learning environment;
- Flexibility and variability of the learning process: the possibility of transformations and changes in the resource potential, the development and implementation of conditions to ensure the full development of the individual trainees and the realization of their abilities.
Undoubtedly, the nature of the (educational) bilingual communication defines the requirements for the personality of the future specialist within the framework of the competence approach. Training future specialists in polyilingual conditions contributes to the formation of a communicative (bilingual), intercultural, sociocultural, and professional competences that determine the success of foreign language speaking. Moreover, the need to study the formation of bilingual communicative competence in the educational environment is conditioned by the social need of the international world: the graduates of the university must be able to immediately integrate into the international business community, being a successful communicator and negotiator. It should be added that, traditionally, bilingual competence means the integrative unity of the following components: subject competence, foreign competence, bilingual educational and cognitive competence and competence of personal self-improvement [4]. All the above mentioned competences are interrelated, interdependent and reflect the basic concept of the bilingual/polylingual educational process. Thus, in the basis of the reasoning of our research, we adhere to the definition of the concept of “bilingual communicative competence” as a student’s ability (knowledge of the subject language competence in two languages) and the willingness of students (the competence of personal self-improvement ) to implement effective interpersonal, intergroup, intercultural communication. We support the idea of researchers that the study, formation and improvement of bilingual communicative competence are possible only on the basis of interaction of cultures, analysis and comparison of linguistic and social characteristics of a person or groups of the language community. To sum up, we can resume that professionally oriented learning in the polylingual educational environment is defined as the interrelated activity of the teachers and students, aimed at studying specialized subjects by means of native and foreign languages. As a result, the synthesis of certain competences is achieved .The deep mastering of the subject (professionally-oriented) content, the development of professionally directed speech, the formation of a culture of professional thinking and language culture, as well as a high level of foreign language proficiency for a special purpose are provided. The phenomenal nature of the polylingual educational environment is conditioned by the multifunctionality and multidimensionality of the phenomenon being studied, which opens up the new possibilities for further practical study of the issues of polylingual education environment in higher education context.