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This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of the Think-Pair-Share (TPS) technique in enhancing students' critical thinking skills and to explore students' perceptions of its application in speaking classes. Using a Classroom Action Research (CAR) design based on Kurt Lewin's model, the study followed the steps of planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. The research was conducted with 30 second-grade students (12 male and 18 female) from SMAN, Aceh, Indonesia, in the 2023/2024 academic year, selected through purposive sampling. Data collection methods included classroom observations, questionnaires, and student interviews, with the analysis carried out using descriptive and qualitative statistics. The findings indicated a significant improvement in students' critical thinking skills, as shown by the increase in performance from Cycle 1 (66.6%) to Cycle 2 (70%). Moreover, the results of the questionnaires demonstrated that students responded positively to the TPS technique. Therefore, the study concludes that the TPS technique effectively promotes critical thinking skills in speaking classes, offering cognitive and engagement benefits.

Purpose – This paper aims to provide evidence that online well-designed educational tasks can provide more relevant and richer active learning environment for business English learners. The benefits of online tasks, as an education tool, became more apparent and gained more importance during the events related to the Covid-19 pandemic. The task design is based on task-based interactions and in a sequence of tasks with the support of an online learning management system (LMS). The findings suggest that online task-based learning (and would-be blended learning in the future) enables meaningful and authentic activities promoting interactions and communicative competences to prepare for learners of business English to enter the workplace. Design/methodology/approach – The overarching aim of the study is to explore how task-design-utilizing online LMS could contribute to enhancing the learning process and to the development of the learner's communicative competences. The study included two aspects, namely: (1) the design of online tasks and (2) pilot evaluation. The task design involved tasks that required interactions between the learners. The pilot evaluation relied on data collection via questionnaires. Findings – Two aspects relating to the findings: (1) a description of the teaching initiatives which was designed to see how blended learning and online tasks can enhance learning and develop the skills of the learners: with questioning techniques targeting communication skills, simulated workplace situations and timely feedback and peer influence; (2) the findings of the pilot study evaluation to see the actual implementation of online tasks. The students' responses corroborate the teachers' comments. The findings of this research showed that LMS tasks, which were designed for this study, helped the learners to enhance their competence in business English. Such competences included communicative skills needed for learners to enter the workplace such as interpersonal skills, presentation skills and negotiation skills in contexts. These findings lead to significant recommendations regarding the way forward for developing active blended learning. Research limitations/implications – Firstly, teachers need to be trained and involved in designing such online tasks and materials to be used in active blended learning. More training in language teaching methodologies should be investigated to adapt the transition from a traditional to a computer-assisted language learning teacher. This helps teachers to design and implement online simulated workplace tasks. Secondly, time for the use of online tasks should be allocated satisfactorily. This can be achieved by building online learning sessions into class schedule or developing active blended courses. The time for the use of online simulated tasks should be allocated satisfactorily with lab or simulation room, in which students would be shown how to access the online tasks designed on the university LMS and the way to practice with different kinds of tasks. Originality/value – In this study context, the online tasks design can initiate at activity-level blending to support face-to-face (F2F) activities, for example, online activities to support tasks for the topic Make a request or Offer for help. This can be extended to course-level blending when more online activities are designed to use with F2F activities such as online comparing and contrasting tasks to develop skills in connections with the awareness of cultures. The findings of the research suggest to develop and to implement online tasks alongside with classroom learning and teaching to enable the objectives of business English programme at university for preparing learners to enter the workplace. The recent pandemic highlighted the need for effective methodologies for active blended learning. It is now required that professionals in higher education to collect evidence base to inform future practice of such methodologies. Further significant research efforts should be directed towards collecting such evidence of the effectiveness and improvements of such methods. The support of higher education management professionals in securing funding for such research will be essential.

The article analyzes the problems of preparing and creating a professionally oriented course book on French as a second foreign language, taking into account that authentic teaching materials are difficult for elementary level Russian-speaking students. The purpose of developing a specialized course book on a second foreign language in the professional sphere is in line with the modern Russian society demand for training bachelors of non-linguistic majors who can speak several foreign languages in their field. This demand is explained by the lack of such specialists, which confirms the relevance of the study. “Syllabus for teaching French as a second foreign language for students of the economic university majoring in restaurant business” has been designed as well as an experimental course book, the purpose of which is the acquisition of specific foreign-language communicative competencies required in this professional field. The article objectively explores the specificity and difficulties in organizing the process of teaching French as a second foreign language after English or German. The authors explored in detail goals, principles, methods and techniques of professionally-oriented training in language activities, presented in national and foreign methodological literature. The authors presented and gave scientific reasons for content selection and methodological organization of educational materials in their course book. The authors used various methods of scientific research: the study of authentic course books and materials in Restaurant Business, comparative analysis, questionnaires, experiential learning and experiment. The analysis of the experiment and experiential learning results clearly showed a high level of performance and mastery of the communicative competence in the experimental groups.

The аrticle deаls with the wаys of tаckling the problems of primаry school foreign lаnguаges teаchers’ re-trаining аbroаd; It аlso exаmines the issues of quаlity аnd efficiency of foreign lаnguаges teаchers аs well аs the implementаtion of concept of innovаtive educаtion for pre-school аnd primаry school teаchers аnd future foreign lаnguаges teаchers. There are two main reasons behind the introduction of foreign languages in primary classrooms. The first is the belief that ‘the younger the better’, the idea that young children are intrinsically better language learners, and will therefore become more proficient more quickly. The second is that in an increasingly globalized world, intercultural competence is essential, and that it is important to awaken children’s interests in other people and cultures at a time when they are open and receptive. Advantages in early learning of foreign languages, as well as methods and approaches conducing the formation of communicative competences in foreign languages for pre-school and elementary school children are considered in this article.

Introduction. This article is devoted to the analysis of the process improving communicative qualities of graduates and future subject teachers through the integration of educational and extracurricular activities. The authors analyze main directions of implementation of interpersonal, group and organizational communication in teacher training. The purpose of the article is to substantiate the effectiveness of the program of developing communicative competences on the basis of project activities in the student scientific community by creating special diagnostic tools. Materials and Methods. As a methodological substantiation of the study, the competence approach is considered; the implementation of the latter, in conjunction with the systemic, innovation-technological, qualitative, activity-oriented and personality-oriented approaches, provides a higher qualitative level of vocational training of future teachers. At the theoretical stage of the study, the foreign and Russian pedagogical theory, practices, standards and solutions to the stated research problem were analyzed. To confirm the effectiveness of the experimental results, methods of mathematical statistical analysis were applied and a special diagnosis was created, compiled in accordance with the Professional Standard of the teacher based on content analysis of the contents of the answers, in terms of the availability of linguistic units of positive and negative connotations. The practical part of the research involved the student scientific community of the Pedagogical Institute. Results. Based on the created model for the content of the communicative competence of the future teacher, the author’s 72-hour program was developed for 6-month extra-curricular activities. It contained various forms of work: the implementation of brainstorming methods, communicative battles, a round table, essay writing, scientific stand-up, intellectual play, etc. The peculiarity of the program was that in each case, up to three roles were considered: coordinator, creative person, participant. The study presents a new perspective on the monitoring of the quality of education, in particular, the author’s diagnosis of analysis of communicative skills aimed at achieving goals of pedagogical activity . Discussion and Conclusion. Practical application of the provisions identified in the study on the integration of educational and extracurricular activities for the formation of communicative qualities of students can be realized in the organization of the educational and educational space of a higher educational institution of the pedagogical profile. The qualitative approach used in the study to analyze the labor intensity of educational disciplines in terms of counting credit units to estimate competencies can be applied as one of the indicators of monitoring basic educational programs. The study will be useful for teacher trainers wishing to improve the educational space of various learning or ganizations for this profile of training.

The authors in this introductory part analyze problem of students’ communicative competencies as well as possibilities for their abetment in teaching process. In this paper we have presented a review of previous tangent research of students’ communicative competencies in teaching process. The aim of the research is to identify dimensions of teachers’ role in encouraging of students’ communication competences in teaching, based on the sample of 275 teachers. In the research we have applied the scale for assessment of teacher role in encouraging the development of students’ communicative competence in teaching. The research results clearly show that the dimensions of teacher’s role in encouraging the development of student’s communicative competences are directed to: 1) encouraging cooperation and toleration in communication, 2) encouraging free thinking in teaching and learning process, and 3) encouraging empathy in communication. The authors in this paper do suggest that a team of experts should be involved (pedagogue, andragogue, psychologist, sociologist, communicologist) in the process f creation and realization of the unique program for teacher’s continual professional training in the field of improvement of communication quality and improvement of exhortation development of student’s communicative competences in the teaching process.

The relevance of this work is determined by introducing new standards of teaching foreign languages as well as the severization of requirements to the quality of Chinese language acquisition by the students of higher educational institutions. The goal of this paper is to study modern innovative methods and technologies of teaching and then use them in the teaching and learning activities, as well as to increase the students' motivation to learning Chinese. The leading approach to this problem is the problemthematic approach. The main material for the study was the following modern educational technologies: the project method, the debate method and the talk show technique. The key findings of the study are the systematization of the main mechanisms and principles of using modern educational technology at the classes of Chinese. The materials of this article may be helpful for school and university teachers of Chinese at the advanced level, as well as for educators and developers of educational materials.

The article describes one of several projects aimed at development of communicative competence of students of the 8-th and 9-th grades of school. Implementation stages of the "Report as a Genre of Oral Presentation of Information" project are described. The goal of the project is studying of the rules of creating, presenting and evaluating academic reports. The genre is defined by three types of academic reports described in I.V. Nikolayenko's thesis: popular science report, academic science classification based report and academic science comparative-based report. The article contains some results of students' project activity: classification table with different kinds of academic reports, statements in the academic report genre made by the participants on different stages of the project, the analysis of the statements made by the students according to criteria which were developed within the project. The subject and key communicative competence skills acquired by students in different stages of the project are listed.

Author/s Oksana Polyakova Ruzana Galstyan-Sargsyan Universidad Católica de Valenica, Spain ABSTRACT As labour markets continue to change rapidly, the learning environments continue to be unchallenged in the provision of new professionals across the world. This change has compelled the need for students to attain communicative competences in non-linguistic institutions of higher education. In order to address this issue, we propose a novel approach to communicative competences integration into the curriculum development of a specialised foreign language course. For this purpose, we combine students’ needs analysis with a personalised English for specific purposes (ESP) course design that motivates them to learn more about technical and professional environments through a skill-based routing. Additionally, we provide a scale for measuring training outcomes as well as suggest first results from the piloting phase of the teaching experience. The findings of the study highlight usefulness of the customised competence training experience.

This article presents the results of an interpretive case study of a group of students in the English Basic V course from the Philology and Languages, English Bachelor’s degree program at the Universidad Nacional. The study relates the analysis of students’ sociolinguistic and strategic competences elicited through chat-based activities aimed at developing and practicing these two competences. It can be useful for teachers of English as a pedagogical resource to practice communicative skills with students in an innovative way and for researchers investigating the development of different English communicative competences in a ludic way using online chat.

In this article we present the results of the documentary-bibliographic study, which goal was to determine, what strategies for the development in the students of textual communicative competences are available to the teacher in a social sciences and humanities postgraduate programs. The research was carried out from the focus on communicative competence. From the analysis made, it can be affirmed that for the successful development in postgraduate students of textual communicative com-petences, the teacher must take into account that their acquisition involves the mas-tery of the complex and specialized (scientific-academic) discursive style; it foresees obligatory appropriation of other communicative competences: linguistics, pragma-tic, paralinguistic, strategic, descriptive referential, representative, organizational, illocutionary; their teaching requires careful preparation: selection of the functional style of the language as a means of scientific communication and articulation around it of different forms of effective and practical learning; choice of didactic texts; coordination of reading and writing teaching actions; elaboration of the exer-cises of interpretation, paraphrase, commentary, annotations, recapitulation, limi-tation, description of the content, conceptual map, compendium-summary, etc.

The author of the article considers the possibility of enhancing students' motivation and development of their communicative competences in a group work, carried out as a psycholinguistic training in the language of speciality. A psycholinguistic training is treated by the author as an active psychological as well as pedagogical method of influence which further on optimizes professional interaction, self-growth, development of leadership qualities and skills of cooperation. The training carried out in the language of speciality (namely English) signaficantly enhanced the participants' motivation to language learning, oral skills development, language barriers removing, as well as accumulation of positive experience towards oneself and others, communication at large. During the training group work all the participants demonstrated all the stages of group dynamic, high level of performance and emotional involvement into the process. As the author marks out, it is the emotional involvement that positively effected the participants' interaction, their self-realization and language barriers removing. In the training program the following methods were involved: discussion (braistorming, case study, method of synectics), role plays, business role plays, art-therapy and metaforization of the accumulated experience. The results of this experiment prove that such combined programs could be effectively applied in Higher education curriculum.

Communicative competences develop rapidly in the periods of infanthood and toddlerhood, both from the qualitative and quantitative point of view. In the following study we aimed to analyse for the first time the age differences in early communication competences of Slovenian infants and toddlers. The sample included 512 infants and toddlers, aged from 8 to 30 months; their communication competences were assessed with the Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Gestures and Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Sentences (Marjanovič Umek, Fekonja Peklaj, Sočan, and Komidar, 2011). The obtained results suggest that in the period between 8 and 30 months of age there are significant age differences within different areas of communication competences (e.g. communicative and symbolic gestures, vocabulary, length and grammatical complexity of sentences). In addition, we found moderate to high positive correlations between different areas of infants' and toddlers' communication competences. The analysis of the effect of gender on the communication competences of infants and toddlers showed that girls and boys aged 8 to 16 months did not differ significantly in their communicative competences. Significant gender differences were found in toddlers aged from 16 to 30 months: girls expressed a more extensive vocabulary.

The article identifies (with the help of questionnaires) the most important communicative competences of a graduate and develops recommendations on strengthening the education level of students on the basis of development of professional and communicative competences.В статье с помощью анкетирования определены наиболее важные коммуникативные компетенции выпускника, разработаны рекомендации по усилению образовательного уровня студентов на основе развития профессиональных и коммуникативных компетенций.

This article is devoted to the issue of specific features of language teaching in Public Bilingual schools.

Far from being mechanistic interactions, communication processes within and between organisms are sign-mediated interactions. Such interactions are the precondition for all cooperation and coordination between at least two biological agents such as organisms, organs, tissues, cells and even subcellular components. In most cases these communication processes are of a fine-tuned interconnected structure within a highly sophisticated hierarchical order. Signs of biocommunicative processes in most cases are chemical molecules. The signs that are used in a great variety of signaling processes follow syntactic, pragmatic and semantic rules. These three levels of semiotic rules are helpful tools in the investigation of the communication processes of unicellular and multicellular organisms. This article demonstrates a coherent biosemiotic categorization of communication processes found in the kingdoms of bacteria, fungi and plants. The investigation further shows that, apart from biotic sign use, a common trait is to interpret abiotic influences as indicators to generate appropriate adaptational behavior.

This paper is an attempt to rethink both the place and the role of the translation as a means of foreign language teaching optimization. Related to this, a distinctive line between the professional translation competences and the competences, obtained in result of teaching/studying translation, has been drawn. The types of competences (linguistic, sociolinguistic, and pragmatic) and the activities (receptive, productive, interactive, and mediating) outlined in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages have been used as a starting point for consideration. Based on them the advantages and opportunities of applying the translation in the overall educational process have been spotted.

This paper presents the results of the second phase of the research project ''Prácticas evaluativas en la adquisición de lenguas extranjeras, PEALE'' (Assessment practices in foreign languages acquisition), mainly oriented to propose an evaluation system where the communicative competences (linguistic, sociolinguistic and pragmatic) play a very important role. The fndings reveal a set of competences not yet openly discussed: the general competences, regarded by scholars from different academic backgrounds as key factors that deeply infuence foreign language (FL) learning, teaching, and assessment processes. The general competences (i.e., learning, learning to be, learning to do and learning to learn) are part of the teachers' profle proposed in different FL teaching training programs in Colombia. Therefore, it is important to refect on the consolidation processes of these competences: both on their incidence in the students' promotion process, and on the proper use of these competences in the FL teachers' performance and professional development. Teacher training is expected to provide teachers with the appropriate tools to develop the general competences in their actual academic performance contexts. However, the strategies are yet to be defned to verify whether the general competences are consolidated with teaching practice or they tend to lose visibility in favor of the linguistic competences. Received: 17-02-09 / Accepted: 08-06-09 How to reference this article: Estrada, L. (2009). Assessment of General Competences in the Professional Development of Foreign Language Teachers. Íkala. 14(2), pp.153-180.