Development of instructional competence of a foreign language teacher in a distance refresher course

Instructional competence of a foreign language teacher is one of his/her most important professional features. The baseline of instructional competence training is a higher educational establishment. Refresher courses, which are increasingly distance ones, play a significant role in its further development. However, due to a certain inconsistency, a lot of items of distance courses delivery require a special consideration. The objective of the study is to analyze the facilities of a distance refresher course when developing instructional competence of a foreign language teacher. The following results are obtained: the contents and structure of instructional competence of a foreign language teacher are specified; the advantages and disadvantages of distance refresher courses for foreign languages teachers are brought out; the peculiarities of creation and the possible contents of a distance course on the basis of LMS Moodle consisting of theoretical, practical and control units are revealed. The conclusion about the efficacy of a distance refresher course in the development of instructional competence of a foreign language teacher is drawn.