Foreign language lexical competence in professionally oriented reading as a methodical problem

Abstract

The article is devoted to the characteristics of the psycholinguistic processes of development of foreign language lexical competence in reading professionally oriented resources and determining the criteria for assessing the development of the mentioned phenomenon. It has been substantiated in the paper that determining the structural elements of foreign language lexical competence in reading professionally oriented literature should be based on understanding the specifics of cognitive processes that provide understanding of the text content, namely memory (short-term and long-term), and attention, as well as defining communicative strategies as a constitutive element of the foreign language communicative competence in reading. The multi-level (seven-level) nature of text comprehension has been considered as the one to serve as the foundation for constructing the methodical model of the teaching/learning process; in this respects, four types of information that the reader receives from the text (categorycognitive, situational-cognitive, emotional-evaluation and motivational-volitional) have been described. At the same time, characterizing the structure of foreign language lexical competence in reading professionally oriented texts involves understanding the specifics of the final result (foreign language lexical competence in reading, developed on a high level), which is possible by determining the criteria for the formation of the studied phenomenon. The results of the analysis of the psycholinguistic mechanisms involved in reading professionally oriented texts, with the selection of appropriate communication strategies to be applied while developing the competence in reading as mandatory elements of lexical competence have been presented in the study. The study also summarizes the achievements of specialists in methods of teaching in determining the criteria assessment of the development of foreign language lexical competence in reading professionally oriented resources.