DEVELOPMENT OF STUDENTS’ FOREIGN LANGUAGE COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN CONTEXT OF INTERNATIONALISATION AND INFORMATISATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION

Abstract

The paper investigates the processes of development of students' foreign language communicative competence at universities under the conditions of informatisation and internationalisation. The hypotheses of our research: 1) in the conditions of internationalisation of higher education, the level of students' knowledge of foreign languages influences the intensity of their participation in international educational projects; 2) internationalisation of higher education creates effective motivators for more thorough study of foreign languages; 3) informatisation is a powerful tool for improving the quality in foreign language teaching at universities. The authors developed a questionnaire including 11 questions (closed and open). Respondents were 245 fourth-year students of Chernihiv National University of Technology (Ukraine) of humanitarian and technical specialities. The majority of respondents (89%) expressed their desire to participate in international educational projects with trips abroad; 44% of respondents identified the unsatisfactory level of foreign language skills as the main barrier to participation in such projects; 67% noted that the latest methods of teaching foreign languages should be introduced at their institution. On the basis of the results of the research, the authors suggest a set of innovative interactive teaching methods using information and communication technologies. The research results will allow increasing the students' level of interest and motivation to study foreign languages and, accordingly; will provide the improvement of existing pedagogical approaches to the development of foreign language communicative competence of future specialists at universities.