Criteria for the Selection of Speech Material for Teaching English for Specific Purposes to Public Administrators

Abstract

Currently, the priority of postgraduate education is the preparation of specialists with a sufficient level of knowledge of a foreign language for the successful exchange of both scientific and technical achievements through inter-lingual channels. Foreign language competence is a prerequisite for professional development of a specialist, and knowledge of a professionally oriented foreign language as a means of intercultural communication will allow a prospective specialist to build the basis of their personal and social life with practical skills and abilities and implement them in professional activities. This allows us to highlight the importance and necessity of a foreign language competence development in the sphere of public administration. Competence development process should be based on authentic materials and account for situations of real-life professional interaction of the specialists that leads to the relevance of the study, which aims to define the criteria of selection of the speech material for teaching English for specific purposes. This aim led to the use of theoretical research methods (studying philosophical, linguistic, psychological, didactic and methodological papers to understand the problem, developing theoretical foundations and conceptual approaches to the development of program material) and empirical ones (scientific observation of teaching a professionally oriented foreign language to public administrators). The article also outlines the importance of the development of professionally-oriented foreign language competence for the public administrators, highlights the main requirements for the candidates for public service positions in the European space, and discovers educational processes in the framework of postgraduate education in Ukraine. The authors define the unit of selection of teaching material and describe the procedure of its selection as well as the conditions of the development of foreign language competence for professional purposes.