Aleksandr Bermys

One of the urgent tasks of pedagogical science is the need to formulate and theoretically substantiate the tasks of applied communication in education as a new branch of pedagogical knowledge, which object of reflection is the process of social communication in the sphere of pedagogical discourse. The authors present an interdisciplinary psychological and pedagogical study, aimed to highlight the opportunities of developing the key components of journalism majors’ social intelligence by means of language disciplines using communicative language education techniques. Based on a review of domestic and foreign psychological and pedagogical literature, methodological approaches to understanding social intelligence are classified, the most popular structural models of general and social intelligence are described, the main features of social intelligence formation at the stage of adolescence and early maturity are observed. It has been proved that in the field of journalism social and communication skills are not only universal, but they are also professionally necessary, therefore, it is necessary to fully use the communicative potential of language disciplines for their development in the context of higher education, since any language is ontologically rooted in culture, society and the human psyche. The authors enumerate didactic techniques that make it possible to effectively form the key components of students' social intelligence – communication skills, intercultural tolerance, empathy, social sensitivity, metacognitive skills, the ability to work in a team, etc. They described didactic opportunities for the development of social and communication skills of undergraduate students with the use of practice-oriented training course on the meta-subject basis “Professional English for Journalists. Levels B1-B2 ". The article presents the results of a psychological and pedagogical experiment, which confirmed the effectiveness of social and communicative skills formation among first- and second-year undergraduate students of the Faculty of Journalism in the process of foreign language training. On the basis of empirical data, the indirect relationship between the positive dynamics of changes in the sociometric status of students, as an indicator of social intelligence, and the introduction of meta-disciplinary educational technologies into the educational process has been experimentally confirmed and conceptually substantiated. In practical terms, the materials of the article can be useful for teachers of humanitarian and language disciplines, psychologists, graduate and postgraduate students in pedagogical areas of training.