Linguacultural Framework for Developing Master’s Students’ Bilingual Rhetorical and Polemical Competences

Abstract

The development of core humanitarian competencies is one of the crucial issues of modern university humanitarian education, including, in particular, bilingual rhetorical and polemical competences, without which an individual will be unableto take part successfully in international discussions and debates on socially sensitive topics and controversial issues in the humanities. And, although in the new millennium, a number of research studies have tried to open the door to the world of discussions and debates to Russian university students, using for educational purposes this or that format of international discussions or debates, nevertheless, an analysis of the theoretical and applied results of these pedagogical searches, as well as a methodological analysis of rhetoric syllabi and Russian & foreign course-books clearly indicate that students are left in the dark about important sociocultural and linguo-cultural features of international discussion and debate formats. As a result, some Master’s students’ classroom debate experiences do not make them really capable of interacting with representatives of other cultural and linguistic communities in international discussions and debate settings. It seems that the first step to improve this didactic situation is to specify linguocultural components of bilingual rhetorical and polemical competences (in terms of knowledge, skills, sociopsychological attitudes, abilities and personal characteristics of an individual who is able to act as a successful polemist and participant in modern online and offline discussion) on a linguo-didactic analysis of the Euro-Atlantic formats of international discussions and debates as linguocultural phenomena. The paper gives an insight into the author’s vision of a component structure of the above-mentioned general humanitarian competencies in the context of the communicative actionoriented and sociocultural approaches to designing a Master’s degree programme of bilingual communicative education through Russian and foreign languages.