Place of elective disciplines in the formation of professional and universal competences of Master’s students of the program “Russian language and Russian culture in the aspect of Russian as a foreign language”

Abstract

Elective disciplines are one of the means of formation of universal and professional competences in Master’s program. Taking into account that elective disciplines are compulsory disciplines of choice, and they are included in the variable part of the Competence-oriented curriculum of the main educational program of higher education in Master’s degree, their role in the formation of universal and professional competences increases and requires a systematic approach to the modeling of the training program, which determines the relevance of the conducted research. The purpose of the article is to analyze the ways of formation of professional and universal competences of students with the help of elective disciplines in the field of linguistics in the conditions of multicultural education. The article summarizes the experience of the department of Russian as a foreign language and its teaching methods in the joint training of Russian and foreign students in the Master’s program «Russian language and Russian culture in the aspect of RCT» (Linguistics). The methods of theoretical analysis, synthesis, interpretation, generalization were used. The main results: the system of elective disciplines should correlate with the disciplines of the basic part of the program and represent a unified whole; the disciplines of the basic and variative parts of the program are developed in accordance with the three scientific directions of research in graduate qualification works of master’s students, namely – text research, linguistic and cultural research and functional-semantic research; elective disciplines are combined into three blocks in accordance to the directions of research of master’s students. The article presents the main themes and problems of electives, as well as the forms of interaction between Russian and foreign students in the course of project assignments in electives. The conclusion is made that when modeling the program it is necessary to take into account the possibilities of multicultural learning for the formation of professional and universal competencies.