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 competence, 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 further 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.