The integrated skill of reading and writing as a component of professional foreign language communicative competence of students majoring in international economic relations

The article explores the process of teaching an integrated skill of reading and writing to students of higher education institutions majoring in international economic relations with emphasis put on its contribution to students’ overall foreign language communicative competence in its professionally oriented variant. In the course of the analysis it is discovered that amid the challenges of real professional communication reading and writing skills undergo a significant transformation: while reading an original professionally meaningful text in a foreign language aims to help write a secondary text, writing, as such, logically completes the integrated process of reading and writing. Thus these two skills should be taught in an integrated manner, for which practical recommendations are provided. It is concluded that such an approach to teaching reading and writing enables building up students’ professional foreign language communicative competence preparing them for dealing with real-life professional tasks.