Psychological Support for the Foreign Language Training of the Students at International Relations Faculties

Abstract

The article studies the innovative elements of psychological support for the professional foreign language training of students at international relations faculties, offers and experimentally verifies the effectiveness of techniques and exercises for the intensification of the foreign language training, based on professional communicative situations in high-risk foreign language environment. Such elements include the use of stress-management techniques and exercises based on real-life professional situations, along with practicing foreign language skills. The appropriateness of use of the elements of psychological support for the professional foreign language training of would-be professionals in international relations was proved to be effective through the experiment. It was conducted with students of international relations faculties through the comparison of levels of performance of two groups of students: those whose professional foreign language training include elements of psychological support and those with traditional training. In order to assess the difference between two groups of students at the summative stage of the experiment, the Mann –Whitney U test was used. The use of psychological support for the professional foreign language training is significant in terms of improvement of would-be specialists' in international relations professional competence.