Modes of communication as part of the language teacher’s professional communicative competence

Abstract

The article is devoted to a new paradigm of considering the professional communicative competence of the language teacher in keeping with the changing approach to the description of the content of language education, which is reflected in the documents of the Council of Europe, in particular the latest Companion Volumes to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) from 2018 and 2020. These documents indicate a transition from four traditional language skills: listening, reading, speaking and writing (which laid the basis for the Russian language teaching tradition) to four modes of communication: reception, production, interaction and mediation. The reasons for and the essence of these changes are described in the first part of the article. Then the article summarizes the leading theories in the study of the language teacher’s professional communicative competence in Russia and presents a revised definition of the professional communicative competence. After that it provides definitions in Russian of the four modes of communication, as well as activities and strategies within them. When considering each mode of communication, their manifestation in the context of the language teachers’ target language use domain is described. In conclusion, the article presents a functional model of communicative activities of reception, production, interaction and mediation as part of the language teacher’s professional communicative competence.

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