ENHANCING PRE-SERVICE ENGLISH TEACHERS’ PROFESSIONAL LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE: BLENDED LEARNING

Abstract

Professionally oriented linguistic competence (POLC) is defined as the enhancement of future specialists’ mastery of professionally focused language material for use in both spoken and written forms. This competence encompasses several subcompetences, primarily phonetic, lexical, and grammatical. It is presumed students already possess high-level competencies in reading and writing techniques.
The practical implementation of blended learning involves organizing the educational process such that traditional classroom learning is complemented by distance learning and selfstudy, using digital tools and applications like Microsoft Teams, Mentimeter, Slido, Padlet, etc. The article outlines the in-class and out-of-class stages of learning.
The purpose of the article is to present tasks that aid in mastering POLC, which is fundamental to developing prospective teachers’ speech and sociocultural competences.
Methodology: a complex of interrelated theoretical methods, including the analysis and synthesis of scientific publications from Internet resource databases, and the generalization of pedagogical experience. These research methods draw on the principles of blended and contextual learning.
The scientific novelty involves designing tasks for the development of pre-service English teachers’ POLC in the academic course «Practice of English Speaking and Writing».
Conclusion: Blended learning has the potential to be effective in today’s university education, as it supports the necessary interactivity, aligns with educational content, and provides ample time for self-study. It facilitates a learning environment close to real-world, quasiprofessional activities, optimizes the teacher’s time, and enhances the efficiency of developing
future specialists’ POLC.