The characteristics of formation of writing competence in the context of training of an English language teacher

Communication and cooperation in economic, cultural, technical, educational spheres between countries with different languages and cultures, customs and traditions have determined the new content of education, aimed at forming competences of the XXI century, upgrading of foreign language teaching technologies in higher education institutions, formation of proper English-speaking communication competence of future language teachers. The purpose of the article is to analyze the peculiarities of formation of the English-speaking competence of philology students at pedagogical universities. The research aims at the solution of the following tasks: to generalize the structure of writing competence and the interdependence of all the components of foreign language communicative competence; to characterize the linguistic and didactic mechanisms and factors of formation of writing competence. The following research methods have been used: studying and analysis of methodical and linguistic works, textbooks, curriculum and methodological recommendations; studying and summarizing of the experience in teaching writing skills; classification and generalization in specifying the structure of English communicative competence in written language; scientific observation. The main scientific and practical results are as follows: 1. Speech activities are of interrelated and hierarchical dependence. 2. Foreign language competence in writing is a complex orderly structure that comprises writing technique and productive writing. Productive writing is divided into educational writing and communicative writing. 3. The analysis proves that writing competence is a set of foreign language specific knowledge and skills, and its indicator is student's ability to use the rules of social behaviour and speech etiquette according to the speech situation. 4. The basic lingua-didactic aspects of teaching writing have been described and it has been proven that their consistent adherence allows developing of the proper writing skills. The prospects for further research are to outline a system of exercises for the development of the philology students' writing competence at pedagogical universities.