The use of descriptive semantic maps in the formation of professionally significant English-language thesaurus of law students

The paper presents descriptive semantic (mental) mapping as a modern technology of formation of English professionally oriented thesaurus among law students. The purpose of the study is to research the process of formation and development of English-language professional communicative competence, which allows ensuring the implementation of communicative tasks of a pragmatic and professional nature in simulated situations of students’ entering legal relations.The author used cognitive generalizing methods such as theoretical analysis of research works in the field of cognitive linguistics, pedagogy, linguodidactics, as well as prognostic methods. The material of the study was the educational and methodical complex of the discipline “English in the field of law”, used in the framework of the bachelor’s program 40.03.01 “Jurisprudence”.The article analyzes the algorithm of formation of skills and abilities of linguocognitive processing of professionally significant legal texts of static character in English using descriptive semantic maps. The analysis of the features of their application allows us to highlight their main function, which is to optimize the development of information about the English-language legal proceedings and law enforcement, necessaryfor effective intercultural communication of future legal practitioners.The formation of the English-language thesaurus of a legal specialist is an important part of modern linguodidactics. The study proves that the optimization of this process was made possible using new learning technologies, in particular, descriptive semantic mapping. Intercultural competence is the primary means of professionalization for a future specialist in any field of activity, and its successful development depends on many factors, such as the desire of teachers to establish creative atmosphere at English classes, the use of advanced techniques, the development of various complexes of linguistic and communicative exercises promoting lexical skills gained in English professionally oriented thesaurus, etc.