Concept «sport» as one of the valueable notions in the English language from the position of its learning at sports university

The paper is devoted to one of the key concepts of English culture - the concept of «sport». The concept is the central linguistic notion. It is understood as a kind of global instrumental unit, as an ideal entity formed in the mind of a person. The relevance of the concept «sport» carries a comprehensive encyclopedic information about the subject of sport and about sport as a phenomenon. The study of this concept, its complex heterogeneous structure in terms of features, categories, components and spheres is also actual. The purpose of choosing this concept for its comprehensive analysis is due to the peculiarities of the representation of the concept «sport». By means of a comprehensive study of dictionary entries on sports, definitions of the concept and «sport» lexemes are analyzed, the history of the concept's formation, its derivational field and word combinations are considered in the paper. Models of phrases forming in which the base word is «sport» (v + n, adj + n, sports + n) are designed to help students learn the language of sport, its features, its terminology and sports discourse. The paper presents the content of the concept, its complex dynamic structure, its field organization, including the core and the peripheries. Certain cognitive attributes reflect the specificity of the given concept. Sports terms included in the core and peripheries, specific examples from English sports newspapers and magazines noted in the course of the paper were selected by the method of continuous sampling in accordance with the frequency of their use. Various spheres of an athlete's activity, the names of famous sports clubs and teams, newspaper headlines of articles are of considerable research interest. In conclusion the conducted research makes it possible to establish that the general universal fundamental concept «sport» provides mutual understanding between different peoples and cultures and is of interest in the study of a foreign language by students of higher educational institutions of a sports profile.