Assessment of the level of basic environmental knowledge of technical university students as the basis of environmental competence in a foreign-language educational environment

This article discusses the issue of determining the level of environmental basic knowledge of students as the basis of environmental competence at the stage of higher education. It is obvious that people who already have a certain level of environmental knowledge and skills, with their own environmental thinking, come to get higher education. Thus, it is very important to determine the real level of environmental competence of students at the beginning of their professional training in higher education. The authors of the article conducted an oral survey to analyze the attitude of 1st-year students of a technical university to environmental education by means of a foreign language, then students were offered testing to determine their level of basic environmental knowledge, and completed the study with another oral survey of students to identify readiness to receive environmental knowledge in a foreign language. The conducted experiment showed an average level of background environmental knowledge, but at the same time demonstrated the interest of the subjects in studying environmental fundamentals by means of a foreign language. The need for environmentally competent highly qualified specialists poses one of the main tasks for the higher technical school — the training of engineers with good environmental knowledge. The authors propose to improve environmental competence through the introduction of an integrated educational and methodological complex "Ecology-English" by means of a foreign language.