Impact of virtual learning environment on the level of communicative competence formation

Abstract

The paper deals with the issue of replacing the traditional educational environment with a virtual one. The use of a virtual learning environment has different effects on the level of competence in foreign language communication. The purpose of the article is to substantiate the effectiveness of applying a virtual learning environment to the educational process of educational institutions and to describe the degree of its impact on the level of competence in foreign language communication. The authors conducted their research and experimental work on the basis of the Department of Philology, Translation, and Strategic Communications of the National Academy of the National Guard of Ukraine to identify the degree of influence of the use of virtual educational environments on the level of competence in foreign language communication. They developed the “Model of formation of a foreign language job communicative competence” based on the fact that the appropriate level of competence in a foreign language professional communication means the ability to obtain a necessary information from foreign sources (while reading and listening) and to formulate oneʼs thoughts by making oral and written messages in the target language (while speaking and writing) while following the grammatical rules of the target language, using the necessary fund of relevant lexical units (at the level that would indicate the creation of linguistic competence) in a coherent and logical form (at the level that would testify to the formation of discourse competence), using appropriate verbal and non-verbal communication strategies (at the level that would testify to the formation of strategic competence) and following the customs, rules, beliefs and principles of a certain society of the target language native speakers (at the level that would testify to the formation of sociocultural competence). The article presents the results of the pedagogical experiment on the formation of foreign language job communication competence based on three criteria (cognitive, motivational-value, and control-evaluative).