MODERN APPROACHES TO TEACHING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE TO STUDENTS MAJORING IN “INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS”

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of improving the effectiveness of teaching English to students of higher education majoring in International Relations. The purpose of the work is to research the latest methods of teaching a foreign language, which will allow students of this specialty to develop the necessary communicative skills of language behavior in situations of professional foreign language communication. The methodological basis of the research is the concept of a communicative-oriented approach as the main strategy of learning foreign languages, the principle of the activity nature of speech communication, the principles of the formation of professionally oriented oral communicative competence of future specialists. The study examines the importance of teaching future specialists oral communication in English, which is the basis for solving any diplomatic problem, forming skills in its use, and forming foreign language competence in specific professional areas of communication. The communicative orientation of the foreign language learning process, which is the main prerequisite for successful practical mastery of a foreign language, involves the use of active, interactive, personally oriented learning methods – discussions, business games, the project method, the language portfolio method, the case method, which simulate real situations of professional communication of experts in this field. At the same time, before applying these methods, it is necessary to pass the first preparatory stage of forming students' language competence – mastering basic lexical and grammatical material, certain words, phrases, their phonetic practice, mastering certain grammatical rules, certain theoretical issues of language functioning, that is, applying the so-called cognitive-communicative approach. Therefore, the article examines the problem of combining these two educational stages of assimilating language material, the issue of lack of classroom time for practicing cognitive and communicative tasks, the question of how to accommodate the preparatory stages of assimilating the material and practicing the skills of its practical use. The way to solve this problem is considered to be the modern didactic technology of flipped learning, which consists in a radical reorganization of the educational process, in changing the distribution of the time spent by the teacher on explaining new material and working on it, which allows freeing up time specifically for oral communicative, purely practical work in classroom classes. Thus, the analysis of modern scientific methodical literature provides a basis for the development of the idea of the possibility and expediency of combining three modern approaches in teaching foreign languages – communicative, cognitive and flipped teaching methods, which is the novelty of the research. The result of the study is the conclusion that one of the ways to increase the effectiveness of practical professional communicative foreign language training of students majoring in "International Relations" is the use of a cognitivecommunicative approach based on the use of flipped learning technology.