Professionally focused communicative competence of prospective foreign language university teachers as a modern trend in higher education

Abstract

The article analyses the present condition of training foreign language teachers / university teachers using pertinent scientific sources. Its objective is to comprehend the scientific developments in cultivating intercultural communicative competence among prospective educators, which have been acknowledged in the scientific realm. This understanding is central to the creation of a theoretical structure for the establishment of professionally focused communicative competence (PFCC) in prospective English university teachers. Despite the progressions in artificial intelligence, teaching professions remain crucial, as automated systems cannot substitute them entirely. The study utilizes analysis, synthesis, comparison, and generalization to comprehensively examine scientific and methodological literature, as well as European and national higher education regulations. It presents a categorical evaluation of «professionally focused communicative competence», which is a subcategory of «intercultural communicative competence». The current state of methodological foundations and scientific support of the process of formation of prospective university specialists’ intercultural communicative competence outlines the following problems: incomplete detailing in the professionally focused foreign language training of bachelors and masters of education; lack of a state standard of higher language education for the training of future teachers / university teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL); limitations of textbooks and manuals for students of the second (master’s) level of higher education. For the successful implementation of the researched training in scientific theory and practice there is an understanding of the need to design: a holistic concept of intercultural foreign language teaching across various  educational institutions, (proposed by S. Y. Nikolaieva), based on the principle of continuity; a foreign language training system for future educational specialists, taking into account the specifics of their specialty and further professional development, requirements for foreign language proficiency, needs of the rapidly changing labour market and, as a result, modernisation of professional training technologies, practical implementation of effective forms and methods of their training in the educational process of higher education institutions