Cultural Component in Professional Development of Non-philological Specialties Students in the Process of Studying a Foreign Language

Abstract

The professional development of future specialists has to meet global and domestic standards. Cultural competence is essential for future professionals as it makes it easier to collaborate with foreign professionals, improve their competitiveness in the world labor market and increase the specialist’s ability to solve professional challenges. The study attempts to answer the questions about the importance of cultural competence development of non-philological students in the process of studying a foreign language and methodological approaches used in this process. The aim of the paper is to present the model of cultural competence formation of future non-philological specialties experts at the foreign languages classes and determine its main components and formation conditions. The study investigates how cultural competence development changes the value-based attitude towards future professional activity and promotes the interest in learning, personal and professional enrichment. Students of three Ukrainian higher educational institutions (from the first to third course) have taken part in the research. The research used conscious-comparative, audiolingual, and role-play methods. The study of the results, based on four criteria (cognitive, moral-axiological, communicative, cultural), showed that learners started to understand the necessity of cultural enrichment of disciplines. The research proved that the implementation of the given technique resulted in the improvement of students’ learning and cognitive activity and enhancement of the general level of training. The paper gives some recommendations for language teachers to organize the process of learning a language on a cultural basis.