The communicative competence of future social workers as a basis of high professionalism and a guarantee of successful activities

The article deals with students’ communicative competence development at all stages of study at a college or a university. The results of the study concerned with the level of their communication knowledge, abilities and skills are presented in the paper. The author considers the conditions for the effective development of the communicative competence, and presents an original special course “The basic communication skills" allowing the students to improve their ability to select the most effective strategies of verbal behavior, speech activities and public performance.