Explanatory note

Linguistic competence refers to knowledge of language areas (phonetics, vocabulary, grammar) and language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) to the level sufficient for communication with the target culture representatives.
Sociolinguistic competence allows choosing appropriate linguistic forms, ways of expression depending on the setting, communicative aim and intentions of the speaker.
Discourse competence (discourse – is a written or oral text) allows recognizing linguistic (lexical, grammatical), stylistic and structural characteristics of written and oral texts in order to interpret and produce text appropriately, as well as based on this, choosing appropriate tactics of behavior for language use.

Strategic (compensatory) competence allows compensating by special verbal/nonverbal means the insufficiency of language knowledge, as well as language and social experience of communication in a foreign language environment, dealing with difficulties in communication situations of misunderstanding by means of asking for clarification, repetition, apology etc.

Socio-cultural competence refers to familiarization with national-cultural peculiarities of language use by native speakers, with those elements of sociocultural context, which are relevant to language production and reception with the view of native speakers: traditions, rules, norms, values, rituals, country specific knowledges, etc. and ability to present national-cultural characteristics of own country comparing with the country of target language.
Social competence is expressed in the desire and ability for communicative contact with other people. Desire to contact assumes the presence of necessity, goals, certain attitude towards the potential partners in communication, as well as self-assessment. The ability in communication contact requires ability of orientation in a social setting and managing it.

Aim of teaching FL is achieved based on the implementation of:

- didactic principles – principles of visualization, reliability, individualization, activeness, pedagogical cooperation of a teacher and learners, whole-person approach in education;
- advanced methodological principles – principles of communicative orientation of education, differentiated and integrated approaches, taking into account language experience of learners, programming and modeling learning process and principle of fragmentation of certain features of language phenomena;
-modern educational technologies – techniques of communicative approach, cooperation techniques, critical thinking techniques, games, role plays, pedagogical monitoring, research and project work and others.
In the framework of developing communicative competence at different levels of education the aim is to be clarified in accordance with the levels of foreign language described in international standards: