Method of introducing difficult professional situations for the development of foreign language communicative competence

The paper considers an important pedagogical problem in the sphere of foreign language teaching, i.e. increasing the level of students’ communicative competence. Case study is a tool for solving this task. The research aim is to develop a set of communicative cases in English for solving difficult professional situations, the implementation of which will contribute to the development of students’ communicative competence. The following methods are used in the research: analysis of modern scientific and methodological literature on the problem of research; testing; monitoring the effectiveness of students’ work when using the developed set of communicative cases; statistical data processing. There were elaborated and tested four cases. The unifying topic of them is «Difficult professional situations». The choice of the topic can be explained by a stimulating effect of difficult situations in a person’s life. The content of each case embraces both productive and receptive skills. The approbation took place at Chelyabinsk State University within the framework of the discipline «Foreign language» (Applied Mathematics and Informatics group of specialties, the profile of Information and Management Technologies). The testees are the first-year students. One of the cases is presented here as a sample. A particular attention is paid to the study of the influence of difficult situations on human behavior. The paper contains a description of the stages of work on a case, criteria for the materials of cases, an analysis of the skills and abilities being formed, as well as recommendations for working with them. The practical significance of the study lies in the fact that the results of the research can make foreign language teaching more effective.