Discourse Analysis in Teaching Professional Communication

Abstract

The goals of the article's authors are: to justify the need to teach students the skills of professional communication in a foreign language on the basis of a text-oriented approach; to demonstrate the possibility of conducting this type of training in reference to the discourse analysis of a particular institutional area. Achievement of the goals is ensured by a set of the following theoretical, empirical, and experimental. Analysis, synthesis, a generalization of scientific and methodological works on the research topic; discourse analysis (method) of institutional communication; methods for collecting and accumulating data; experiential learning, implementation into practice. The article presents the results of the study: teaching professional communication through the use of professional texts with due regard for the discourse analysis of the corresponding communicative situation is grounded; the significance of the text-oriented approach in teaching international students the language of their university major is estimated; ways of developing the respective speech competencies are exemplified. The results presented in this article could be instantaneously applied in the learning process and eventually in the job search. The conclusions would be demanded in theoretical courses on the methodology of teaching foreign languages, special courses on the university major's language, etc.