The competence-based language portrait of an educational migrant

Abstract

The relevance of the article is determined by the emergence of new problems in the educational process organisation, especially by securing the adjustment of educational migrants to studying at the universities abroad. The aim of the article is to describe the language portrait of an educational migrant and to define the core and methodological means of organization, during the foreign language studies, of the academic adaptation process of the students of non-philological specialities, intended for terminable study (a term or year) at foreign universities. The system of problems of educational migrants and the factors of the adaptation process (objective-social, socio-psychological, psycho-physiological) have been analysed. The Ukrainian students’ adaptation to foreign educational conditions is determined as academic adaptation. The aim of adaptation is academic adeptness. The model of academic adaptation of the students, which are going to participate in academic exchange, has been developed. Such model considers the construction of target, organizational, informative and technological components. For the specification of the target component parameters, the structure of IELTS testing materials has been analysed. The informative component of the adapting model is the students’ academic and socio-cultural communicative activity situations, which are supposed to be simulated. For such situations it is necessary to form the subject matter and educational aim of each methodological episode, and to describe the procedure of language interaction. It assumes the definition of the subject scope of a speech activity within the relevant situations; determination of typical participants of the situations and their typical intentions; composition of participants’ speech characteristics and singling out of the set of linguistic measures for intentions realisation. The invariative (for all non-philological specialities) and variative (for certain speciality and defined level of proficiency) parts of language teaching material have been defined. The invariative part is composed of the typified means of speech contact, the verbs denoting general educational and mental processes, expression of personal point of view, estimation, control and self-control.