Participation in online foreign language Olympiads as an important aspect of the university students' communication skills formation

technical students participating in interuniversity foreign language Olympiads is being analyzed in the article. This study uses materials of the Synergy students’ participation in National and International Olympiads. The online format is considered as the most convenient and providing maximum opportunities for participation. The research significance lies in the possibility of using the materials to organize further work with students in order to improve the quality of their preparation for such events. The purpose of the research is to identify the "strengths" and "weaknesses" of students in the main types of communication activities. The research objectives are analyzing the results of each Olympiad completed and developing methodological recommendations to prepare students for next year competitive tests. Special attention is paid to the skills of listening, speaking, reading with information extraction, as well as grammatical skills. The main hypothesis of the study is that students have the best developed lexical and grammatical communication skills, while listening and speaking are less developed. The results of the completed Olympiads have been analyzed, and the methodological recommendations have been developed for preparing students for competitive exams in the following academic year.

types of communication activity, students of technical specialties, foreign language, preparation for the Olympiad, online format, methodological recommendations