Effective strategies forming L2 professional communicative competency in postgraduate groups

The article deals with the issues of forming L2 professional communicative competency while teaching groups of postgraduates who major in different fields and have different levels of language proficiency. The current trends in higher education impose new requirements on the level of university graduates and postgraduates' proficiency, which makes the ability to speak a foreign language socially essential, not optional as before. The focus is transferred from the skill of merely translating specialized texts to the ability to effectively communicate with international colleagues, both orally and in writing. L2 communicative competency is viewed as an essential component of scientific personnel training, which is supposed to forge successful professional accomplishments. Postgraduates are reported to be ready for intercul-tural communication in the areas of professional and research activities, for which they are expected to master the advanced threshold level B2 and professional use level C1 of Common European Framework. The problem under consideration is to determine possible ways of forming postgraduates' ability to communicate in the foreign language on the level of unprepared and prepared monologue and dialogue, taking into account very limited duration of the postgraduate English course. The article researches into the theoretical foundations and peculiarities of forming L2 communicative competency in the postgraduate course environment with non-linguistic postgraduate students. It is argued that training non-linguistic professionals must be distinguished from training interpreters, foreign language teachers and linguists proper, as both the aims and the ways to achieve them are different. There is no need for a non-linguistic postgraduate to obtain the level of English close to the one of a native speaker. Their main task is to effectively take part in the interlinguistic and intercul-tural communication to satisfy their personal needs, which could be getting an education abroad, scientific activity or business relationships. The article enlists a number of approaches both widely applied in international linguodidactics and developed by Russian scholars for graduate and postgraduate education in order to form L2 communicative competency with non-linguistic students. The principle of interrelated teaching all the four types of communicative activity (I.L. Bim, I.A. Zimnyaya, A.A. Leontiev, E.I. Passov and others) is defined as the major one in postgraduates' training Followin this principle, speaking, reading, listening and writing abilities of postgraduate students should be developed in complex, this way complementing the progress of one another. The authors lay emphasis on forming postgraduates' ability to communicate on the basis of independently prepared and unprepared monologs and dialogs. Integrativity and systematicity as indispensable features of approaches employed to teach postgraduates are seen as conditions for effective development of L2 communicative competency. The theoretical positions presented in the article underlay the module-by-module concept of the Foreign Language course in the postgraduate department of Nizhny Novgorod State University. They were verified in class with postgraduate students of different specializations. Using the communicative approach proves to be appropriate as it approximates the in-class situation to the ones of real professional communication. Among the distinctive features of the method, a significant increase in the activity of both students and teachers can be named, due to selecting problems closely related to postgraduates' interests and practical needs. The method forges development of public speaking skills due to preparing and making presentations, taking part in group and class discussions, in the long run fostering their professional competency. It encourages students to show initiative, realize creative and intellectual abilities. When interactivity principle is employed in class, the teacher's function shifts to facilitation, providing help and support, whereas students turn to subjects of the educational process. The authors describe personal experience of using Elevator pitch and TED Talk technologies in class, dwell on their features and functions as professional role play which are commonly of great assistance in enhancing L2 communicative competency. Forming the skills of unprepared public talk, answering unexpected questions using academic vocabulary and specific terminology, speaking about serious issues in simple terms is described. The postgraduates get the knowledge of public speaking skills which enable them to increase the effect of their talk on the potential audience. This knowledge, combined with further intense practice, eventually will make the students more competitive on the professional labor market. The presented technologies turn out to be effective to help overcome the communication barrier and increase students' motivation. It is highlighted that the play-based activities Elevator Pitch and TED Talk make students feel more confident and relaxed in their speech performance in comparison with more traditional in-class practice activities. The authors share their experience in applying authentic professional texts in postgraduate training and using translation and interpreting as a scaffolding measure on the students' way to accurate and complete comprehension. This technique is to be abandoned later, when students' comprehension skills advance far enough to understand professional texts without translating into their native language. Besides providing translation practice, authentic scientific texts serve as the basis for preparing monologs, presentations, followed by group discussions of the problems raised. Modern information technologies of distance learning seem to become a valuable asset to the university environment, especially in so called electronic educational courses (EEC), which proved to be indispensable for postgraduates to intensify their training. Advantages and benefits of EEC application are enlisted for teaching academic writing to postgraduates within the limit of very few academic hours per the postgraduate course. Emphasis is laid on the fact that to be considered part of modern scientific community, postgraduates face the need to publish academic papers in foreign magazines, as well as establish collaboration with foreign academic institutions. That is where academic writing skills come indispensable. Conclusions are drawn on the need to integrate professional role play, information technologies and module structure into the teaching process at the postgraduate level to meet the challenges of present-day professional and academic environment. Positive effects of the abovementioned experience are reported and effective solutions to problems common to Russian universities are offered. The research data can be used in teaching postgraduates majoring in a wide range of non-linguistic fields.

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