Debates as a mean to develop meta-subject competencies of technical students in learning foreign languages

The system of higher professional education in Russia fails to timely respond to recent intensive developments on the national and international labor market and corresponding changes in Russian educational standards. Therefore, there is a rapid need in essentially new approaches to training highly qualified specialists to attain the desired outcomes, which reflect not only subject-oriented knowledge but also personal skills and the ability to effectively communicate with an opponent, a customer or a partner. Taking this into account the authors made an attempt to develop a specialized module that exploits a debate methodology to improve meta-subject competencies of students in the framework of a language course. The methodology, the conditions of the module delivery and examples of assignments are introduced in the article.