Strong communication skills, in varied professional settings, have become an absolute necessity for young professionals. Therefore, university educators are challenged to provide novice specialists with the effective foreign language training that could bring the real professional world into the classroom. This study suggests an innovative method for teaching communication skills to students, through the use of real-life scenarios, drawn from the professional context. The core objective of the research was to define whether the scenario-based instruction could effectively enhance the development of professional communication skills of students in the context of university foreign language training. The data were collected through active observation and critical incidents technique, analyzed and summarized by means of descriptive statistics. The results of the study indicate the efficacy of scenario-based communication training in higher education. However, scenario-based instruction requires careful assessment of learners’ needs and expectations, thoughtful selection and design of teaching materials, and the development of an active learning environment.

Bilingual teacher education is a relatively new area of scientific research. Although different theories and models to language teacher education abound, they are quite fragmented, thus, their implementation in the academic context of pre-service language teachers’ education demands further analysis and research. Therefore, the aim of the present research is to develop an integrative multifunctional model and support it with sequenced steps of its implementation. The multifunctional model, developed by the authors, consists of core components, such as knowledge, context and level of management and demonstrates an integrative approach that enables the balanced combination of diverse teaching techniques at different levels of teacher training. To check the model validity, action research has been adopted as method to organize the course of experiment in collaboration with quantitative and qualitative methods to gather and analyze the data. The research resulted in the following findings: the theoretical and practical knowledge has improved by 28% and 14% respectively whereas the levels of performance achievement and significance have reached 72 %, 72% and 60% accordingly. It can be interpreted as the development of theoretical and practical knowledge, reflective and analytical skills as well as confidence in teaching practice.

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The COVID-19 crisis has considerably changed the educational landscape and resulted in a scientific debate on the efficacy and prospects of online education. Recent research is focused on analyzing the psychological and instructional difficulties faced by both educators and learners during emergency remote teaching (ERT). However, a limited number of studies tends to present a holistic instructional framework that could benefit educators in situations of a similar educational crisis. This study aims at identifying psychological and pedagogical implications for instructional framework design in situations of abrupt transition to online learning. Employing a qualitative approach, this study is based on the dataset collected from 152 students obtaining bachelor’s and master’s degrees in social sciences. This dataset was analyzed and interpreted by means of descriptive statistics. The findings helped to identify students’ perceptions of ERT, core difficulties, and preferences which underlay the conceptualization of the instructional framework adjustable for ERT. The presented instructional considerations could contribute to the effective design of technology-assisted courses in the context of higher education.

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