On using non-standard multi-level tasks in teaching foreign language writing speech activities

This article discusses some aspects of teaching foreign language writing and written speech activity to students-linguists in higher schools. The authors provide a general overview of methodological approaches that existed in the domestic practice of teaching a foreign language in various historic periods, identifying both their causality and the main shortcomings. In this connection they cite as a starting point some methodology approaches to teaching writing and speech activity, practiced in foreign and Russian scientific schools. At the same time, the paper also highlights the current changes in modern university curricula and educational and methodological complexes related to the formation of written communicative competence, as well as the most significant factors underlying them. Emphasizing a rather specific nature of independent creative writing as one of productive speech activity types and important means of communication, the researchers offer as an alternative means of teaching some complexes of non-standard multi-level test tasks, specifically elaborated and used in the frame of annual distance project linguistic-cultural quiz competitions in English as a foreign language.