Sustainable units and intercultural professional communication (based on the material of the English language)

The article examines the importance of collocations in English for successful professional communication. Mention is made of communicative errors that lead to abnormal situations at sea. The prevalence of mistakes caused by "human factor" is emphasized, especially mistakes related to insufficient level of maritime English of crew members, as well as lack of knowledge of cultural peculiarities of representatives of different nations. The importance of collocational competence for marine English learners is discussed, and the difficulties of learning collocations, including those related to inter-linguistic differences at the lexical level, are touched upon. The importance of collocations in professional maritime speech is explained in detail; their significance being explained using Standard Nautical Phrases. Particular attention is paid to the types of exercises on mastering collocations by maritime students, based on their level of English proficiency. Among all, types of tasks aimed at the formation of "intercultural communicative competence" are discussed; a certain algorithm of the initial stage of introducing collocations into the course of practical classes is proposed. The importance of context, including professional context, in the study of collocations is emphasized.