Multilingual Education: Development of Professional Foreign Language Communicative Competence of Students in a Digital Environment

Introduction

One of the most important aspects of the economic and social modernization of society in Kazakhstan is the language policy. In this regard, there is no doubt about the relevance of the multilingual education concept, which is the result of the state national and linguistic educational policy reflected in the Constitution of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The major directions of multilingual education development include:

• - improvement of the quality of foreign language training;

• - development of innovative foreign language education;

• - integration of teaching with intensive research activities in the field of linguistics, methods of teaching foreign languages, and intercultural communication;

• - creation of constructive links between teaching foreign languages at a university and the needs of society;

• - improvement of education and information technologies in the field of teaching foreign languages.

The strategic goal of multilingual education in Kazakhstan is to create conditions for the simultaneous study of three languages in accordance with international standards, namely: Kazakh as the official language; Russian, which is officially used on a par with Kazakh; English as a tool to ensure integration into the world economy (Nurgaliyeva et al., 2019).

In Kazakhstan, multilingual education aimed at the integration and internationalization of Kazakhstan into the world educational and scientific communities is rapidly developing. The new generation of Kazakhstan is being comprehensively integrated and is under the influence of multilingual education, which is being introduced into the curricula of universities (Aubakirova et al., 2019). Due to the global reach of multilingualism in the social life of people and its close connection with the cognitive development of a person, the issue of effective foreign language learning is being discussed in priority scientific social areas such as applied linguistics, education and psychology, psycholinguistics and educational psychology (Lin & Lei, 2020).

Foreign language knowledge is a key factor in building high-quality intercultural communication opening up opportunities for economic, social, and cultural activities. Alongside the expansion of communication opportunities for international cooperation, there is a need for the development of professional personnel that is good at interpersonal and intercultural communication within the framework of a system of universal values and capable of living and working effectively in a rapidly changing multicultural world. In the foreign language teaching methodology, it is a generally recognized fact that cultural aspects of language learning should be strengthened. It is necessary to learn a foreign language culture within the framework of mastering communication skills as language learning logically implies the study of a national culture through linguistic forms and categories, as well as ways of reflecting the socio-historical background. According to the cognitive approach to the study of language and linguistic processes, language is a means of expressing semantic concepts, which are the result of the reality perception by a person and processing of the information received (Solodilova & Zakharova, 2020). The concept of intercultural competence is associated with the ability to successfully interact in the environment of cultural differences that are determined by the variation of social value orientations: behavioral norms, communication styles, forms of relationships, gender issues, different attitudes towards punctuality, focus on priorities, cultural intelligence, and intercultural awareness. Communicative competence plays a significant role in overall intercultural competence. Effective foreign language communication is based on three aspects: grammatical (mastery of vocabulary, grammar, semantics, and phonology), sociolinguistic (skills of proper interpretation of socio-cultural aspects of speech), and strategic (the ability to use verbal and non-verbal strategies to restore communication in the context of the grammatical or sociolinguistic basis violation) competence. Intercultural competence and communicative competence form a professional foreign language communicative competence (Douglas & Rosvold, 2018).