Foreign language training of non-philological specialties students based on communicative and cognitive approach

The article is devoted to the problem of implementing a communicative-cognitive approach to teaching professional English of non-philological students. The author gives her own definition of this approach regarding it as a kind of educational process which combines conscious learning of the language and cooperation of students in organizing their communication and provides participation of each student in the roles of both an object and a subject of cognitive activity. Today in Ukrainian methodology the principles of a communicative-cognitive approach to teaching professional English are not systemized. As a rule scientists research principles of a communicative and cognitive approaches separately. The author of the article clears out its main psychological and methodological grounds and describes the principles of a foreign language training of non-philological students based on the communicative-cognitive approach. They are: learning a target language in the situations close to the real life with preserving all necessary attributes of an authentic speech. Principles of independency and personal activity are the cornerstones of the communicative-cognitive approach to teaching as well as the principles of speech and mental development. The other principles are: comparative and contrastive, prevailing of a dialogue speech, the principle of meaningful of all tasks performed in class and one of the main principles in the methodology of teaching foreign languages – that of a dominative role of exercises. It is proved that it is impossible to teach students a foreign language without constant training them in doing a lot of exercises. The teacher of English should organize the class activity in accordance with the students' professional interests and choose the situations for discussion which create opportunity for each student to express his or her own ideas. It is stressed that the role of an English teacher is to constantly encourage students in their desire to master their skills in reading, speaking, writing and comprehension by ear. It should be taken into consideration that non-philological students are mostly motivated to learn their professional disciplines and regard English as an additional subject. Their professional interests should be focused on during the English language classes.