Creating educational environments for the development of students communicative competence theoretical and practical assumptions

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Edukacinė aplinka; Komunikacinė kompetencija; Educational environment; Comunicative competence.

ENConclusions. The concept of a targeted educational environment is used to refer to the educational environment as solving certain educational problems that emerge in particular socio-cultural contexts. The main issues of targeted educational environments for developing students communicative competence at universities of the countries undergoing transformations are related the need to integrate into intercultural academic and professional communities, on the one hand, and to the limited opportunities of exposure to the target language and intercultural environment, on the other hand. A targeted educational environment may be defined as the environment, related to competence-based, psychological, study, and material conditions, which is designed for solving an educational problem emerging on the way to a specific educational outcome, and is capable of providing the learner with empowering means, helping to identify and use them in order to achieve his/her learning aims. The model of a targeted educational environment for developing students communicative competence in foreign languages for academic purposes integrates the conditions of a targeted educational environment and the structure of the parameters of communicative competence for academic purposes as well as involves the dimensions of context, experience, process, and product. The socio-cultural context attributed to the dimension of context determines the problems underlying the need to create a targeted educational environment; the characteristics of learner competence conditions and teacher competence conditions are attributed to the dimension of background.The results of empirical research have shown that in the dimension of background the students attitude towards speakers of other languages and their perception of their own communicative competence manifests only partly: its manifestation is dominated by adequate attitudes and attributes (positive attitude towards the speakers of other languages, willingness to communicate with them, openness to new cultural experiences), but does not involve adequate knowledge about intercultural communication; in addition, the element of learners individual abilities and language learning skills is manifested only partly. The manifestation of teachers attitude towards their professional activity as the element of a targeted educational environment is perceptible: teachers have expressed a positive attitude towards their professional activity; however, the expression of teachers ability to learn is insufficient, mainly because the teachers do not tend to carry out research on their performance in order to improve it.