Development of the communicative competence of students of technical universities as a strategy for teaching effective communication

Dorfman Oxana ORCID: 0000-0001-8621-4189 PhD in Pedagogy Associate Professor of the Department of Russian Language, General Linguistics and Mass Communication, Magnitogorsk State Technical University named after G.I. Nosov 455000, Russia, Chelyabinskaya oblast', g. Magnitogorsk, pr-t Lenina, 26, of. 206 mandorffoks@yandex.ru

Chernova Oksana ORCID: 0000-0002-0641-7910 PhD in Philology Associate Professor, Department of Russian Language, General Linguistics and Mass Communication, Magnitogorsk State Technical University named after G.I. Nosov 455000, Russia, Chelyabinskaya oblast', g. Magnitogorsk, pr-t Lenina, 26, of. 206 ocher08@inbox.ru

With the introduction of an activity-based approach in the education system, the concept of communicative competence is considered more often in relation to school students than to students, especially technical universities, although aspects of communicative competence and its components have been discussed for quite a long time ^[1-3]. A retrospective analysis of communicative competence, which is defined as an "inter-functional category" ^{[4, p. 12]}, is presented by V. V. Yatsenko, I. O. Naidis. The authors are convinced that it needs to be decomposed into proper communicative, digital and cross-cultural ^{[4, p. 15]}, and it needs to be developed "in close connection with information knowledge, skills and abilities, along with readiness to solve professional tasks" ^{[4, p. 16]}, which is more achievable in relation to higher education education. Indeed, education in universities is reduced to the formation of a system of universal, general professional and professional competencies, and communicative is included in the group of universal.

In the second decade of the XXI century in Russia, the concept of "skills" came to replace "competencies", which is increasingly replacing it ^[5]. Communicative competence is usually attributed to soft skills, which, unlike professional hard skills, are meta-subject. Despite the fairly widespread use of the concept, researchers include various elements in communicative soft skills.

Thus, basic communication skills (communicative literacy) are, according to S. N. Batsunov, I. I. Derech and others, one of the four groups of soft skills. These include: the ability to listen, convince and argue, negotiate, make presentations, public speaking, self-presentation, teamwork, focus on results, business letter ^[6].

The ability to communicate in accordance with the communication situation, to read facial expressions and gestures, to be able to negotiate, to competently start and end communication, to summarize the conversation are attributed to the indicators of communicative communication in V. V. Lorenz ^{[7, p. 61]}.

O. P. Gorkova, N. V. Kozlovsky are convinced that flexible behavioral skills in most cases manifest themselves in the process of communication, which are implemented in: 

- negotiation competencies — "the ability to find an approach to the interlocutor and direct the conversation in a constructive direction, for which it is necessary to correctly formulate thoughts, hear the interlocutor's position, be tactful in any situation and find a compromise; the ability to resolve conflicts" ^{[8, p.22]};

- intersectoral communication — "the ability to contact interlocutors working in various fields, as well as to overcome professional misunderstandings through the use of various sources of information" ^{[8, p.23]};

- sociability — "a skill that contributes to successful interaction with people around you, in which the positions of both sides of the conversation are taken into account and considered important; it is necessary to be able to establish contact with the interlocutor, listen and hear the interlocutor, understand his position and be able to adapt to a specific situation, environment" ^{[8, p.24]}.

Indeed, these indicators are necessary for modern graduates to be successful in the profession. Communication skills are required for solving professional tasks, for effective conflict-free interaction with colleagues and partners, for competent translation of experience and its exchange. Unfortunately, the conducted studies ^[9] demonstrate that students are not fully familiar with the concepts of hard skills and soft skills, cannot distinguish their elements, i.e. not only do not realize a systematic approach to the formation of competencies, but also are not able to build a personal trajectory for the development of flexible skills, unlike rigid professional ones.

The demands of the time are such that employers attach importance to flexible skills ^{[7, 9, 10, 11]}, and the professions themselves are changing very dynamically. This is confirmed by the Atlas of New Professions, developed by Skolkovo specialists and serving not only as a career guidance tool, but also as a certain navigator of demanded competencies. Sometimes it is quite difficult to guess which professions will be needed and will be in demand in the next five to ten years. Considering that the bachelor's degree period takes four to five years and the master's degree lasts for two years, a graduate who does not have the flexible skills to integrate into a new profession will not be in demand in the labor market.

Let's analyze how the formation of communicative competence among students of technical universities is carried out. Within the framework of FGOS 3++, CC-4 is one of the universal competencies and is characterized by the following content: "it is able to carry out business communication in oral and written forms in the state language of the Russian Federation and a foreign language(s)." The competence map of the CC-4 indicates the following planned results of its development:

1. Chooses the style of communication in Russian, depending on the purpose and conditions of the partnership; adapts speech and communication style to situations of interaction.

2. Conducts business correspondence in Russian and foreign languages, taking into account the peculiarities of the style of official letters and socio-cultural differences.

Russian Russian translation 3. Performs for personal purposes the translation of official and professional texts from a foreign language into Russian, from Russian into a foreign language.

4. Speaks publicly in Russian, builds his speech taking into account the audience and the purpose of communication.

5. Orally presents the results of his activities in a foreign language, can support a conversation during their discussion.

And if students of the humanities have the development of communication skills through the means of many subjects, then the technical areas of the CC-4 are usually formed by only two disciplines related to the study of Russian and a foreign language. We have reviewed disciplines related to the development of communicative competence for business communication in Russian in technical universities. They can be combined into two groups:

1. "Culture of Scientific and Business Speech" (NSTU), "Workshop on the Culture of Speech Communication" (MISIS), "Fundamentals of Practical Rhetoric" (MISIS), "Russian language and Culture of Speech" (Bauman Moscow State Technical University, MTUCI, Sibstrin, A.N. RSU Kosygina, MSTU Stankin, MGUTU named after K.G. Razumovsky, Kamchatka State Technical University, NRU MEPhI);

Russian Russian Language" (Moscow State Technical University, Moscow Polytechnic University), "Business Communication in Russian" (Moscow State Technical University named after G.I. Nosov), "Business Papers" (Moscow State Technical University named after G.I. Nosov), "Business Communication" (MAI), "Russian language and Intercultural Communication" (SPbPU), "Russian Language and Business Communications" (KNITU), "Business Communication" (DSTU), "Business Communications" (RCTU, MIPT), "Speech Culture: Effective Communications" (PNRPU).

It can be noted that the phrase from the wording of the CC-4 — "business communication" is often used in the names, although so far the most common variant of the name is "Russian language and speech culture", which is found in a larger number of universities. The analysis of work programs shows that in the first group a significant role is given to the normative aspect of the functioning of the Russian language and training in compliance with norms in one's own speech practice, which is certainly important in business communication. But the above analysis of communicative competence as soft skills proves that this is not enough. The work programs of the second group often include these elements.

 It should be noted that most often in technical universities language discipline training is carried out only in the first (less often — the second) semester. It must be remembered that the practice of effective communication must be continuous. E.A. Sherstyannikova characterizes aspects of the development of communicative competence at the bachelor's, master's and postgraduate levels and concludes that this is "one of the priorities of modern higher education" ^{[12, p. 319]}.  

What should be the content of the training so that the communicative competence of students of a technical university is formed and developed sufficiently? In accordance with the State Program "Development of Education", professionally oriented and flexible training programs should be introduced by 2024. In this regard, it is necessary to think over the mobile structure of the discipline, its semantic blocks can be:

- basics of communication and communication techniques,

- types of speech activity and speech situations,

- verbal and non-verbal communication,

- aspects of social communication,

- emotional intelligence,

- communication barriers and their overcoming,

- business communication,

- logic of argumentation.

It seems appropriate to highlight the basic and integrative content modules of the course. "The purpose of the basic content modules is to give an idea of speech as an instrument of effective communication, the purpose of integrative modules is about speech as an instrument of effective communication in the field of professional communication" ^{[13, p. 241]}.

In the course of training, "it is necessary to take into account the specifics of the metalanguage of a particular science, the peculiarities of texts of various specialties ... the leading place should be occupied by texts of a general scientific and highly specialized nature" ^{[12, p. 318]}.

The need to turn to texts for the development of communicative competence is obvious: "If it is impossible to deny the significance in today's realities of digital technologies, it is necessary to recognize that the condition for the formation of soft skills (regardless of the profile of the training program) is the ability to work with verbal text" ^{[14, p. 283]}. It is impractical to develop a single discipline program and teach it to students of all technical areas of university training. Such a method will not contribute to effective communication. The content blocks may be identical, but the texts used for training should reflect the specifics of the industry. This implies "analysis of communication situations within a special sphere, selection of speech topics (frames) related to future work, compilation of vocabulary minima for a specific category of trainees ^{[13, p. 241]}. During classroom and extracurricular work, "special professional terms are classified and analyzed on the material of educational and scientific texts; the norms of the Russian language are worked out on scientific texts of the sublanguage of the specialty" ^{[15, p. 34]}.

O. B. Sirotinina notes that in each sphere of communication "there are threats in case of failure to achieve effectiveness, but in all spheres achievement means the effectiveness of communication, i.e. the realization of the goal that the addressee set for himself" ^{[16, p. 40]}.

It is extremely important that the formation of communicative competence has a reflexive character. To do this, at the first stage of training, the student must draw up a personal map of communicative competence. The student should set a goal, clarifying the concept of communicative competence in relation to his industry, to identify indicators of its achievement in order to track these indicators not only during the study of the discipline, but also throughout the entire period of study.

G. P. Baibekova ^[10], H. A. Shaikhutdinova ^[9], L. V. Shaulska ^[11], O. V. Rumyantseva ^[5], O. B. Ganpantsurova ^[17], E. Yu. Kashaeva and I. A. Kondratieva ^[13], E. V. Rumyantseva ^[5], O. B. Ganpantsurova ^[17], E. Yu. Kashaeva and I. A. Kondratieva ^[13], E. F. Gladkaya ^[18], M. A. Grigorieva, R. S. Satretdinova ^[15], E. Leontyeva ^[19], etc. Here is a selection of effective, in our opinion, methods and techniques.

E. F. Gladkaya highlights visualizations, team competitions, debates among the forms of work used in teaching the Russian language and rhetoric. M. A. Grigorieva, R. S. Satretdinova offer creative tasks of a productive nature, mini-conferences, linguistic exercises with elements of role-playing ^{[15, pp. 34-35]}. H. A. Shaikhutdinova is convinced that it is necessary to organize discussion clubs and oratorical courses to learn how to express your opinion and defend it and remove the fear of speaking in front of a large audience ^{[9, p. 272]}. According to O. B. Ganpantsurova, a significant role should be given to self-learning, feedback structuring, learning by experience and networking, special tasks that educate professional and personal qualities should be used, and during training it is advisable to use the method of analyzing storylines based on binary thematic oppositions ^{[17, pp. 309-310]}. The educational and practical manual "Effective Communications" ^[20] provides examples of cases for conducting business negotiations, conflict management, and participation in public speaking. These methods and techniques can be used in the course of practical classes and trainings, which should become the main forms of teaching effective communication.

In accordance with the requirements of state policy, the instructions of official documents, the trends of the world professional community, the dynamics of changes in the professional industry, a new look at the competence approach in education is being formed. In recent decades, flexible skills have become increasingly important, which need to be given more attention in the learning process. Communicative competence, being a component of soft skills, is becoming in demand not only for humanities students; it is a significant learning result that contributes to the success of the graduate. Based on the above, it can be concluded that for the effective development of the communicative competence of students of technical universities, it is necessary to update the content of training, its forms, methods and techniques.