Formation of communicative competence in a professionally-oriented foreign language course in higher education: issues and recommendations

Abstract

The aim of a professionally-oriented English language course is to develop students’ communicative compe-tence, English language linguistic competence, in particular, that supports students’ professional expertise. In this paper, the main issues of the formation of communicative competence in a professionally — oriented English language course at the university level are discussed. The data is drawn from the survey conducted among undergraduate and postgraduate students in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan (N=48, mean age 26.5) who have taken the course. The survey results revealed that although students hold a positive attitude towards the course, they did not show some sufficient improvement of linguistic skills after the course completion, and more than 33 % of respondents rarely or almost never used the acquired English language skills for their fur-ther professional development. In this paper, I argue that to reach the intended learning objectives of the course, there is a need for university teachers to create a more «authentic» environment in order to involve students in creative and engaging classroom activities.