Multifunctionality: a top down projection of university foreign language education

Abstract: imperative of modern education is to form key competences or soft skills along with per-sonal values and specific professional competences, the study aims to describe one of the types of tasks which contributes significantly to students’ integral outcomes improvement. Materials and Methods. The study was conducted in the framework of university foreign language education. It involved language and non-language students with levels of communicative language competences varied from A1 to B2 ( CEFR). Qualitative and quantitative methods of research as literature review, work analysis, student questionnaires and interviews were employed in the study. A traditional PPP model (present, practice, produce) teaching model with further result as-sessment was used in the first part of the actual research. The second part involved multifunctional tasks and result assessment. The results of students performance were assessed according to the cri-teria developed by the authors. Chi-square test of independence was performed to examine the rela-tion between the use of PPP model and multifunctional tasks and the students’ results. Results: As the students’ outcomes were assessed and analyzed, the study confirmed the hypotheses that multifunctional tasks enable the achievement of higher level in both language competence and key competence which means that multifunctional tasks contribute to better integral outcomes. Discussion and Conclusion. The study has revealed that both models (PPP and multifunctional) boost students’ foreign language communicative competence however the use of multifunctional tasks stimulate the key competences and personal qualities development which is necessary for eve-ry professional. Multifunctional tasks are versatile and can be tailored to different language level and adapted to different content.