The development of future teachers’ foreign language education in the context of the European Council strategic documents

Abstract

Among the main tasks of higher education defined by the National Doctrine for the Development of Education of Ukraine in the 21st century are the following: to form the necessary intellectual and moral basis necessary for future professional activities in the fields of education, science, culture and to form the qualities necessary for further professional development. Such qualities include global thinking; professional values and morals; cultural competence; functional literacy and professional universality; culture of communication; ability to apply knowledge in professional situations; responsibility, the culture of group interaction, social and professional mobility, ability to study for a lifetime, foreign language and sociocultural competence in a foreign language among students of humanities. Now foreign-language education in Ukraine is being reformed taking into account the achievements of European countries by such documents of the Council of Europe as: “Bilingual education: the main strategic tasks”, “All-European competencies in foreign language proficiency: study, teaching, evaluation”, “European language portfolio”, “Aligning language exams with All-European recommendations on language education”, “Strategic development program for Multilingual Europe 2020”, “Recommendations on pluralistic approaches to languages and cultures”, requirements for Euro-exams, etc. The ideas of the language policy of the Council of Europe are increasingly being implemented in our country: the number of languages is increasing; there is an increasing number of people who speak at least one foreign language; several foreign languages were started in secondary schools; the number of academic hours for learning a foreign language is increasing in universities; in some institutions of higher education, foreign languages are considered the second working language.