TEACHER OF MULTILINGUALISM: COMPONENTS OF PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION (SETTING OF A PROBLEM)

The purpose of the article is to present the fundamental components to the professional education of a foreign language teacher as a principal actor in the process of forming multilingual personalities. These constituents incorporate both linguodidactic and general pedagogical aspects. Among the former multilingual communicative intercultural competences, methodological competence and multilingual sociocultural competence are crucial. The latter include the teacher's didactic creed, didactic thinking, ability to assess the pedagogical situation, ability to make the right didactic decision. The issue is highly topical in view of the fact that it is inextricably linked to the linguodidactic boom in the sphere of teaching multilingualism. In the article, the basics of the conception of professional education of a foreign language teacher are outlined, taking into account existing experience of developing multilingual personalities in a long-term linguodidactic experiment at Pyatigorsk State University. The authors argue that the concepts of ‘teaching several foreign languages' and ‘teaching multilingualism' should be differentiated and justify transformation of the concept ‘teaching a second / third language' into ‘teaching multilingualism.' They also outline certain theoretical prerequisites for this transformation and summarise the existing positive and negative experience in developing multilingual personalities. Some pitfalls in the task of teaching multilingualism are described, such as situations when the teacher has not been properly trained or does not have the command of didactics of multilingualism or when the sociocultural component of multilingual communicative competence has not been thoroughly exploited. The authors have mainly relied on such methods as analysis of scientific papers on multilingualism, instructional experiment and observation of the process of developing multilingual communicative intercultural competence. As a result of the research of the above-mentioned aspects of the problem of professional education of teachers of foreign languages the following has been found: A teacher of multilingualism is a truly multilingual personality who has mastered key linguodidactic competences (multilingual communicative intercultural competence, methodological competence and multilingual sociocultural competence), and also a number of general pedagogical competences (the teacher's didactic creed, didactic thinking, ability to assess the pedagogical situation, ability to make the optimal didactic decision).