Foreign language communicative competence and its features of formation in a non-linguistic university

Existing      programs      in      foreign      languages as      a practical learning objective determine the formation of students' ability and readiness for intercultural communication. This goal involves the achievement by students of a certain level of foreign language communicative competence in the field of oral and written communication. Foreign language communicative competence is considered as the ability and willingness of a non-native speaker to carry out effective foreign-language communication; at the same time, ability and readiness are formed on the basis of a specific set of competencies that make up the structure of foreign language communicative competence.

At present, unfortunately, many graduates of universities of a non-linguistic profile have an insufficient level of formation of a foreign-language communicative competence. This is primarily due to the peculiarities of teaching a foreign language in a non-linguistic university, as many researchers rightly pointed out dealing with the problems of teaching a foreign language in non-linguistic universities. The most significant of them are the following:

• 1.    The goals and content of teaching a foreign language in a non-linguistic university.

• 2.    The quality of teaching aids. In most non-linguistic universities, the main means of organizing teaching a foreign language and the source of textual material is a traditional textbook, which is rarely provided with audio material, containing popular science texts of a descriptive nature, adapted texts of scientific articles, exercises with words and phrases with a translation , grammar commentary . Such a textbook does not provide the student with information about the success of his advancement in the process of forming skills and abilities, does not take into account the individual psychological characteristics of students, and does not provide the necessary flexibility to control the learning process. It is quite obvious that at present there is a need to create an educational and methodological complex that meets modern requirements for the formation of communicative foreign language competence, including textbooks, teaching aids, video and audio training sources, and computer programs. A modern foreign language textbook for a non-linguistic university should reflect the needs of a specific student population , contain a sufficient number of exercises that ensure the formation of strong skills

• 3.    Training conditions . If we take into account modern requirements, it becomes obvious that the number of hours devoted to classroom instruction in a non-linguistic university is clearly insufficient. The state educational standard provides for 170 academic hours and the same amount for extracurricular independent work of students, which must be used as efficiently as possible, considering it as an opportunity to optimize the educational process.

Typically, the practical orientation of teaching a foreign language in not language high school is to obtain additional information about spetsial no STI, which involves the study of general scientific and specialized terminology, close to the future specialty. For this purpose, texts of a general scientific, general technical and popular scientific character are included in the system of classes. Accordingly, the leading type of speech activity, as a rule, is reading. However, the use of reading as the main type of speech activity is absolutely insufficient. Without a large amount of materials for listening, speaking and writing, it is impossible to effectively develop the communicative competence of students, especially in a foreign language.

in various types of speech activity and include means for implementing current, intermediate and final control and self- control.

The modern student audience is far from homogeneous. Firstly, students of non-linguistic universities have different initial levels of language and speech training. In most cases, the initial level of proficiency in a foreign language with which applicants come to the university after graduating from high school is not sufficient to form a solid foundation for achieving the program goals of education. Secondly, students of non-linguistic universities differ in their attitude to the study of a foreign language. At present, in study groups one can observe both students who are clearly enthusiastic about learning a foreign language, and students who are willing and ready to master it perfectly. In our opinion, this is due to the specifics of the professional activity that they are guided by in the future, and the needs of using a foreign language in it. Thirdly, in a group of students of a non-linguistic university, as a rule, there is no uniformity either in psychological or in intellectual relations from the point of view of teaching this group a foreign language. In addition, students who come to a non-linguistic university are characterized, as a rule, by two established educational types: communicative and non-communicative. Representatives of these types require different approaches, which must be taken into account for the successful formation of foreign language communicative competence.

The limited number of hours allocated to classroom activities increases the role of independent work on the language. The effectiveness of independent work largely depends not only on the ability of the teacher to organize it competently and to carry out its systematic control, but also on the availability of the necessary information and language environment. The lack of computer literacy of many teachers of a foreign language and the absence in most non-linguistic universities of the educational library, specially equipped classrooms (language laboratories), and computer classes with Internet access do not allow successfully organize independent extracurricular work of students and optimize the process of monitoring and control.

Thus, the following directions can be considered promising directions in solving the problem of developing foreign language communicative competence in a non-linguistic university:

• •    focus on teaching students written and oral communication, the development of all types of speech activity in the domestic, sociocultural and professional fields of communication;

• •    the creation of an educational and methodological complex that meets modern requirements for the formation of foreign language communicative competence;

• •    the formation of language groups based on a combination of such parameters as the levels of initial language and speech training of students and their motivation in learning a foreign language; 5) the creation of the necessary information and language environment for the organization of independent work and the methods of its control and monitoring.