Nowadays the growing professional orientation of all the aspects of foreign language teaching is widely recognized as one of the major trends in the process of enhancing foreign languages curriculum at higher education institutions which specialize in training non-linguistic students majoring in various fields of international relations. Professionally oriented foreign language teaching implies using the foreign language classroom as a source of forming a wide range of professionally meaningful competences (both linguistic and non-linguistic) of would-be specialists along with developing their sense of professional identity. Despite the fact that professional identity - usually interpreted as individuals' perception of themselves as members of a certain profession - is the culmination of a long process of professional development, its cultivation with future specialists should be seen as a priority as early as at a higher education level - a college or university. Referring to psychological research, the author states that emotional factors play a decisive role in shaping professional identity at early stages of a person's professional development. It reveals the importance of analyzing the potential of literary texts in a foreign language in terms of their ability to contribute to developing prospective specialists' professional identity, as such texts represent a valuable text material which provokes readers' powerful emotional response and thus triggers empathy. The novel "The Firm" byJ. Grisham and "The Headhunter" byj. Mead were selected by the author for the home reading classroom with would-be economists, as coupled with a competence-based learning aid they allow teachers to create a unique discourse, which facilitates the process of developing students' professional competences and their professional identity. Along with their clear professional content, they appeal to students, as the problems raised in them are relevant to those of young readers. Such emotional contact provokes empathy, or a feeling of compassion and sympathy, which contributes to tackling the above pedagogical tasks. According to the author, empathy as a means of developing professional identity is realized through students' analyzing and assessing the professional behaviour of literary characters and their identifying themselves with protagonists or distancing from antagonists guided by professional criteria. It is essential that reading the above novels enrich would-be economists with the knowledge and experience, though non-empiric, of various business situations. The author concludes that such information about the profession in question is likely to prove valuable, as it "has been digested" by students by identifying their moral and professional attitude to it.
Nowadays the growing professional orientation of all the aspects of foreign language teaching is widely recognized as the main trend in the process of enhancing the system of foreign language teaching at higher education institutions which specialize in training students majoring in international economic and political relations. In view of the above the article focuses on the role of teaching home reading and analyzes the possibility of its integration into the professionally oriented process of teaching English as a foreign language to would-be economists. Another reason why the issue of teaching home reading is of utmost importance is that due to the prevailing communicative approach in teaching English as a foreign language, coupled with teaching English for professional purposes, some researchers and practising teachers are of the opinion that large-sized literary works are «incompatible» with an efficient foreign language curriculum. Hence, the importance of analyzing the role of such texts in teaching English given its increasing professionalization. According to the author, the specific features of reading literature in a foreign language make it an irreplaceable and useful resource for a wide range of linguistic competences. However, its competence forming potential can only be fully realized if certain general and specifically professional criteria for choosing a literary text for a home reading class are implemented. Such criteria are as follows: the reader’s emotional involvement with the plot and the problems raised in a book; a low degree of linguistic and cultural deviations; popular literary genres; clear professional orientation of a text. The author goes on to analyze the professionally oriented novels by J.Grisham and J.Mead and concludes that they can be successfully incorporated into professionally oriented process of teaching English, as they fully satisfy all the above criteria and, moreover, represent a unique resource for a wide spectrum of professional competences of a future economist, both linguistic and non-linguistic (e.g. sociocultural and analytical competences). In addition, the learning aids written by the author encourage students to treat the text of the books as a source of professionally meaningful information.
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