Development of professional foreign language speaking competences of students majoring in «Tourism Business» at the economic university

This paper discusses ways to optimize the process of students’ professional foreign language competence development at a non-linguistic university, based on students’ language and speech training at the economic university training program of «Tourism business», which combines a comprehensive business training with entrepreneurial approach to future qualified professionals working in the leisure and tourism industry. This involves acquisition of necessary competencies by students, aiming them at the prospect of becoming entrepreneurs and managers who are able to realize their working potential both at the national and international level. This, in turn, imposes quite high requirements for professional language training at a non-linguistic university and implies fluency in a foreign language by graduates. An additional catalyst for the Samara Region and a dozen other regions of the Russian Federation was the 2018 FIFA World Cup, which stimulated the formation of modern infrastructure of the tourism industry and confirmed relevant changes in the field of higher education. Globalization and the Internet have changed all aspects of foreign language training, including at a non-language university, especially for the tourism and hotel industry. Many of the strategies that have been applied in higher education until recently are no longer effective at present because of new and constantly evolving technical capabilities.