Development of foreign professional communicative competence of students of the specialty «International Law»

In the present work, the problem of formation of Foreign Language Professional Communicative skills of students of the specialty «International Law» is highlighted. Essential characteristics of such concepts as communicative, foreign communicative, professional and foreign language professional communicative competence are reviewed. The article analyzes the scientific and theoretical literary sources on the research problem, on the basis of which the author's definition of the notion of «foreign language professional communicative competence» is given, its structural components are identified; The features of its formation using CLIL technology are disclosed. The authors defined the basic principles, specific features, advantages of the use of content and language integrated learning (CLIL) in the development of foreign language professional communicative skills of future international lawyers. Along with the advantages of using CLIL technology, the difficulties of implementing this technology in teaching students of non-linguistic specialties are noted. Within the framework of the problem, emphasizing the complexity of training a highly qualified specialist in the field of international law, the authors conclude that for the formation of a foreign language professional communicative competence, it is necessary to balance such components as the level of professional knowledge and a sufficient level of proficiency in a foreign language.

Due to globalization processes the amount of international relations between countries of world community has grown dramatically. Successful international interaction among countries depends largely on competent work and proficiency of specialists in different spheres. In this context, foreign language proficiency becomes an essential part of training of competitive specialists for work in national and world labor markets.

Foreign language fluency and accuracy of specialists in various fields of economics is of great significance for establishing not only personal, scientific and cultural contacts with foreign partners, but also as an instrument for providing professional relations for an effective exchange in future practical work and experience is noted in the Concept of the Development of Foreign Language Education in the Republic of Kazakhstan [1].

The progressive development of cultural, socio-economic, scientific and political relations between countries is largely determined by the competence of specialists in international relations, whose professional skills are the criteria of their successful work in the international arena.

An important role in the formation of a competent, competitive specialist with developed professional knowledge and skills play his communicative abilities in the field of intercultural and interpersonal communication.

In this regard, we would like to consider the concept of communicative competence.

N. Chomsky considered competence as an ability necessary for communication in his native language and defined it as «linguistic competence» [2]. Chomsky believed that a competent, fluently speaking person should form or understand an unlimited number of proposals for models, and also have a judgment about the utterance. [3; 119].

The term «communicative competence» is widely explored in the researches of Russian and foreign authors. Opinions about its structure are different, there are many interpretations of its definition.

The concept of communicative competence was the result of an attempt to differnciate two notions- cognitive (academic) and basic interpersonal communicative skills of a person [4; 98].

Based on the specifications of the Council of Europe, Jan Van Eck singles out the following components of communicative competence:

• – linguistic (knowledge of vocabulary, grammatical rules);
• – sociolinguistic (the ability to use and interpret language forms in accordance with the context);
• – discourse competence (the ability to understand and logically construct separate utterances for the purposes of semantic communication);
• – socio-cultural (knowledge of the socio-cultural context);
• – strategic (ability to use verbal and non-verbal strategies to compensate knowledge gaps);
• – social competence (desire and willingness to interact with others, ability to manage the situation) [5].

Foreign scholars M.Canale and М. Swain believe that the term «communicative competence» refers to knowledge and to the «skill of real communication», and distinguishes the following subcomputencies in the structure of communicative competence:

• – grammatical;
• – sociolinguistic;
• – discourse competence;
• – strategic competence [6].

One of the scientists who made a significant contribution to the development of the notion of communicative competence is S. Savignon, who considered communicative competence to be a dynamic concept and who presented a model of communicative competence in the form of an inverted pyramid, the edges of which are grammatical, discourse, strategic and sociocultural competences [7].

A. Zimnyaya defines communicative competence as a person's ability adequately address the most diverse situations of communication and organize his speech activity in its productive and receptive forms appropriate to each specific situation and language means and techniques [8; 28].

The analysis of the models of communicative competence available in linguistics and linguodidactics shows that researchers treat differently to its structural components.

Despite the diversity of views on the structural components of this phenomenon, scientists agree that the main components of communicative competence are:

1. knowledge of the system of the language studied and the ability to apply it in communication (linguistic competence);
2. the ability to understand and generate foreign language utterances (different types of discourses), formed on the basis of linguistic knowledge and language skills, combine them within one act of communication in accordance with a specific communicative situation, a speech task and communicative intention (discourse competence);
3. knowledge of the sociocultural specifics of the country of the studied language, as well as possessing skills and abilities that allow to perform verbal and non-verbal communication with native speakers of the language in accordance with this specificity and norms regulating verbal interaction in the corresponding linguistic and cultural community (socio-cultural competence);
4. ability to use one's own verbal foreign language experience to compensate gaps in knowledge of the language (strategic competence) [4; 101].

The sphere of professional activity of the future international lawyer is the legal support of national security and the problems of the legal regulation of the activities of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the development of science-based practical recommendations on foreign economic and foreign policy activities of various bodies of state power and administration and other organizations of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the legal settlement of the problems of the development of world politics. Obviously, taking into account the main field of activity of the future lawyer in the field of international law, along with the knowledge of the norms of substantive law, knowledge of a foreign language is very important, since the activity itself is associated with close interaction with representatives of other cultures and big amount of document circulation in foreign language.

Out of the eight key competencies allocated by the European Commission for Education, communication in a foreign language is second only to communication in the native language. Taking into account the professional activity of a lawyer involves interaction with other people, i.e. interpersonal communication; and if we take into account the specific nature of the work of a lawyer in the field of international law, due to the professional need, who is in close contact with representatives of other cultures; then the formation of foreign language professional communicative competence for such specialists is, in our opinion, one of the most important components of the professional communicative competence of an international lawyer.

Thus, one of the indicators of proficiency of the future specialist in international affairs is a high level of foreign language professional communicative competence, the formation of which is an important part of the pedagogical process in the conditions of the university.

What does the concept of foreign language professional communicative competence mean?

The interpretation of the concept of foreign language professional communicative competence is ambiguous due to the versatility and complexity of the term. In the structure of foreign language professional communicative competence, two components can be distinguished: foreign language communicative competence (knowledge and fluency in a foreign language) and professional competence (competence in a chosen profession).

Researcher N.V. Lavrova correlates the concepts of communicative and professional competence. Thus, in the structure of the component composition of communicative competence, she identifies the subject matter competence, which she regards as the ability to orientate in a meaningful communication plan, based on knowledge of a certain sphere of activity in a given linguistic society [9; 110]. The researcher believes that the basis of the subject matter competence is the person's terminology knowledge , which assumes both the subject knowledge and understanding the essence of the mechanism of professional activity. Only in view of the subject competence are defined «spheres, themes, situations of communication, communicative intentions in speech actions» [10; 13] The social order of a modern society to teach and learn a foreign language not only as a means of communication, but also as a way to form a competent specialist who is ready for in- tercultural professional communication, caused the need of development of a professional component of the foreign language communicative competence of future specialists.

In the context of the investigated problem, a certain interest is evoked by the approach of T.N. Astafurova, who considers professional oriented communicative competence and which she treats as «the ability to interact effectively in professionally significant situations by means of the language studied, taking into account the linguistic, psychosocial, behavioral, cultural characteristics of a foreign society which presupposes «the ability to use vocabulary of business and professional spheres, i.e. adequately cover the communicative intentions of foreign partners, as well as the skills of using the norms of speech etiquette, social, real behavior in formal and informal situations of business communication, in which the knowledge of the situational and sociocultural contexts of an other culture is actualized» [11; 17].

O. Iskandarov considers professional communicative competence as a complex of personality properties, the commitment of which creates the best conditions for motivating the educational and cognitive process, as it provides psychologically full interaction in the process of professional communication in a foreign language [12; 53].

Analysis of scientific and methodological literature shows that the foreign language professional communicative competence was interpreted as: the ability of a specialist to carry out an effective communication in the professional and business spheres in all kinds of foreign language speech activity [13; 48]; the readiness and ability of a specialist who did not study a foreign language at the language department to the use foreign languages' linguistic, cultural, scientific and subject knowledge to carry out an intercultural communication act in professional context to carry out real life intercultural communication by means of a foreign language [14; 7, 8]; the ability of a future law graduate to interact as a linguistic personality in a professional-oriented communicative situation with specialists of other countries; readiness to carry out intercultural professional dialogue in a multicultural space in conditions of international mobility and integration [15; 35]; an integrated professional and personal language students' resource, ensuring the implementation of their communication in a specific speech situation and also enabling to regulate communicative behavior in the professional sphere of communication [16; 8].

On the basis of analysis of the concepts of communicative competence, professional competence, foreign language professional communicative competence, we define foreign language professional communicative competence of an international lawyer as the ability and willingness of a specialist in the field of international law to communicate in a foreign language in the framework of the practical application of the knowledge, habits and skills acquired in the training process for the successful conduct of professional activities in the field of international law.

There is no consensus among researchers on the problem of the component structure of foreign language professional communicative competence. So, A.S. Andrienko singles out linguistic, discourse, educational, strategic, sociocultural, social, linguistic, socio-information, socio-political, personal competencies [17; 16].

V.N. Zykova includes 4 components in the structure of foreign language professional communicative competence: linguistic, pragmatic, subject matter and strategic competencies. She treats linguistic competence, as the knowledge of lexical, grammatical, phonetic and graphic skills on the level of the English language standard and the ability to use linguistic phenomena in the process of perception and generation offoreign language speech in written and oral form. Pragmatic competence is understood as the ability to construct and understand a statement in accordance with communicative tasks and situations of professional communication. Subject-matter competence means the ability to perceive and produce statements adequate in terms of content standards adopted in various areas of professional communication. Strategic competence implies the ability to determine the purpose of professional communication, evaluate its results and plan its tactics [13; 49].

V.V. Tarasenko divides competencies into three large blocks: basic competences, academic competences and professional ones. From the point of view of the researcher, the basic competences (personal and educational) are the base of foreign language professional competence. Competencies of the educational block are formed further: socio-political, sociocultural, social-information and social. These competencies are a transitional link to the block of professional competences: strategic, linguistic, linguistic, discourse, the formation of which means the completion of the university training of a specialist [18; 10, 11].

The structure of foreign language professional communicative competence by V.A. Aitov includes the following components: 1) Competences of the first group (linguistic and speech) he defines as the knowledge and mastery of oral and written foreign-language communication; 2) The second group of competencies: the competences of the sociolinguistic level are represented by socio-cultural competence and linguocultural competence, which is regarded as «the ability to communicate effectively in a foreign language on the basis of authentic texts that reflect social and cultural concepts of a different social community, including background knowledge, equivalent vocabulary, rules of etiquette adopted in the country of the studied language, as well as samples of literature, song and poetic creativity» [14; 18]; 3) The third group, the group of competences of a pragmatic level includes the subject matter, informational and self-educational competence.

Despite the ambiguous views of researchers in determining the components of foreign language professional communicative competence, we believe that the most significant components for the successful professional work of future international lawyers are:

•  Language competence, presupposing knowledge of lexical units and grammatical rules that convert lexical units into meaningful utterance, and the ability to apply these rules in the process of expressing and perceiving judgments in oral and written forms;
•  Speech competence - knowledge of the rules of speech behavior, the choice of language forms and means and their use, according to the goals, communicative situations and the social status of participants in the process of socio-cultural and professional communication;
•  Discourse competence, allowing to establish the contextual meaning of a coherent text and logically construct statements in the process of communication;
•  Sociocultural competence is characterized as the ability of communicators to adequately perceive, understand and evaluate cultural and scienctific achievements of other people in the process of intercultural, professionally oriented communication;
•  Linguistic professional (subject matter, special) competence - the ability to perceive and generate texts in a specific professional sphere, language cliche for specific purposes, the ability to use in a proper way scientific and professional vocabulary, analyze, critically conceptualize and present texts of professional- oriented character;
•  Socio-political competence - the ability to navigate in a linguistic multicultural space, taking into account the norms of civil law behavior of a country of a studied language;
•  Intercultural competence - the ability to interact with the representatives of another culture, taking into consideration national values, norms and perceptions; to create a positive attitude for communication; choose communicatively purposeful ways of verbal and non-verbal behavior [15; 35].

The issues of effective learning of English for specific purposes in the context of the development of foreign language professional communicative competence of future specialists were the subject of research of many scientists. One of the innovative approaches in the formation and development of the studied competence of future international lawyers in the undergraduate program is CLIL technology (content and language integrated learning), which is based on the policy of the European Union, which promotes bilingual education as a way of convergence of European countries. CLIL technology is widely used in Europe within the framework of the language policy on education [19]. The term was introduced into scientific practice by David Marsh (University of Jyväskylä, Finland) in 1994. Many countries successfully use CLIL technology in practice.

The cognitive theory of J.Cummins bilingualism is the theoretical basis for an integrated study of a foreign language and subject content. It explains the interdependence between the cognitive ability and the degree of individual bilingualism. J.Cummins concludes that the level of competence of the second language depends on the degree of competence of the first language [20].

According to the theory of bilingual education, a model to be used in the given context is the model in which the main stage of instruction in an educational institution takes place in the native language and the integration of the second language occurs when the person's mental and linguistic skills have reached a sufficient level of development. As a result, there is a kind of transfer of cognitive structures from the first to the second language [21; 78].

The idea of a language-based integrated approach is also based on S. Krashens' theory of language assimilation and based on the fact that a specially methodologically coordinated teaching of a subject discipline and a foreign language (and in a foreign language) contributes not only to the successful assimilation of both subjects, but also to a large extent develops the cognitive skills of students by establishing a variety of neural connections in the brain [22; 110-118].

Numerous studies in the field of the effectiveness of the application of bilingual training programs have shown that proper implementation of such programs in the learning process is an effective way of simultaneous learning a foreign language (also in foreign language) and academic disciplines.

Foreign methodologists D. Coyle, D. Marsh, F. Hood [23] single out the principles of CLIL technology which are closely related to the tasks of development a foreign language professional communicative competence and contribute to the creation of a natural learning environment. They are:

•  Authenticity of materials used in CLIL techology (reproduction of real life situations in international law, such as the situation of legal advice, or in the situation of signing international agreements).
•  Teaching is concentrated in several directions: the development of cognitive skills through the analysis of the subject content; development of discussion and collaborative skills among students and also improvement of critical thinking skills.
•  Students are actively involved in the educational process and involve other students in the project evaluating each other.
•  A safe learning environment is provided by creating a friendly atmosphere and equal conditions for all students,
•  Scaffolded instruction. Based on the concept of «zone of proximal development» by L.S. Vygotsky, the idea of J. Bruner, who believed that when children start to learn new concepts, they need help from teachers and other adults in the form of active support. He compared adult instruction to scaffolding that supports the construction of a building. As building is being finished, scaffolding is gradually dismantled, so is the adult/teacher instruction is gradually desmantled with the acquisition of learning autonomy. Scaffolded instruction is realized in CLIL technology as a basis of methodological help of a teacher [24].

Since CLIL technology does not impose admission requirements on students' language skills, CLIL programs do not have age limits, which make them adaptable to different learning contexts. It is important to note that CLIL technology presupposses that language is a goal and a means of forming subject matter and foreign language competences among learners.

Having considered the principles and peculiarities of CLIL technology, we believe that this approach has a number of advantages in training students professional foreign language and is more acceptable for the formation of a foreign language professional communicative competence of students specializing in International Law. In the framework of the development of foreign language professional communicative skills, students of the specialty «International Law» first study the discipline «Foreign Language» and basic professional disciplines, and only then they study the disciplines «Professional-Oriented Foreign Language» and profile disciplines.

Advantages of CLIL technology are:

•  CLIL technology combines the subject area and the language. To improve foreign language professional communicative skills, a student should know both a foreign language and professional terminology. Foreign language professional communicative competence in the framework of baccalaureate is formed within the studied disciplines «Foreign Language», «Professional-Oriented foreign Language». However not all higher educational institutions follow this sequence and the study of a foreign language often remains isolated from other disciplines, including non-language disciplines, which is resulted in low efficiency of students' education.
•  CLIL technology increases student motivation. Content and language integrated learning presupposes the use of materials students are interested in as their subject area and so the student motivation is increased.
•  CLIL technology creates natural authentic language environment. The use of various authentic materials i.e. written, audio and video materials, allows students to immerse themselves in a professional language environment and situations that are closest to real situations arising in the professional sphere.
•  CLIL technology improves and develops cognitive abilities of students. Models of bilingual education where foreign language acts as an instrument of obtaining special knowledge and self-education, intercultur- al communication and polycultural upbringing lead to development and enhancement of man's cognitive abilities.
•  CLIL technology saves training time. The idea of using the principle of content and language integrated learning stemmed from increased requirements for a foreign language knowledge level with limited training time. Teachers worldwide face this problem.
•  CLIL technology represents a broad cultural context, improves the awareness of learners about one's own and other cultures, fosters tolerance towards other cultures.
•  CLIL technology develops students' communicative skills.
•  CLIL technology reduces stress level in learning process because this technology primary focuses more on smoothness and fluency of the speech than its grammatical or lexical accuracy. Nevertheless, there are a number of factors that need to be taken into account when using CLIL technology in teaching and learning process:

1. The use of this educational technology is time consuming for a teacher. Teachers are not always willing to support such innovations because it leads to increased preparation time.

1. A small number of programs and workshops for training specialists in the field of CLIL.
2. A small number of hours provided for the training of a competent specialist who has a good command of a professional foreign language does not always lead to a productive result.
3. Insufficient level of students foreign language knowledge can reduce the quality of learning the subject.

As a result of our study, we conclude that training of a highly qualified specialist in the field of international law is a complex process in which it is important to follow a balance of the components, such as level of knowledge in their professional field, as well as the level of foreign language proficiency. The development of foreign language professional communicative competence is undoubtedly an important part of training competitive specialists in the international labor market, for which the use of CLIL technology plays an important role as an innovative approach to teaching professional foreign language. Despite the difficulties of introducing the CLIL technology into the learning process, it meets modern requirements in the training professionals with a high level of foreign language proficiency and along with other pedagogical technologies, can contribute much to the development of a foreign language professional communicative competence of future lawyers in the field of international law.

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