Zhanbota B. Esmurzaeva

The changing picture of the world and the development of technologies and means of production determine training of a new generation of specialists for Russia. The competence-oriented model of vocational education becomes relevant. Using new generation educational materials that meet the modern requirements of the Federal State Educational Standard is the condition for achieving the high quality of education. Educational literature, as the main means of teaching, should ensure the formation of competences of future specialists. We devote the study to the analysis of the effectiveness of textbooks and manuals in a foreign language for agricultural universities in terms of their focus on the students’ communicative competence formation. With the help of the methods of problem and comparative analysis of textbooks in English for agricultural universities, presented in the electronic library system “Lan”, we evaluate educational materials in terms of their competence conformity, communicative orientation, and functional completeness. The analysis has shown that educational materials in English perform the following functions: informing, developing, managing, motivating, and systematizing. However, the controlling component is not implemented, since the materials do not contain in full the basic didactic units that are subject to verification at the stage of knowledge control. Thus, the following issues are referred to the actual problems of educational and methodological support in teaching a foreign language in an agrarian university: problems of a content-didactic and organizational-methodological nature, the effectiveness of educational materials in English. Examining current pedagogical studies in the area of educational literature in foreign languages allowed for an explanation of the above issues due to inconsistency in methodology: educational resources are created utilizing the principles of the knowledge paradigm, learning results are designed as competences.

The article presents the experience of using different methods of teaching English in terms of soft skills formation. The authors demonstrate various approaches to the use of the term. They come to the conclusion that that the effective management of group and pair work, guided discovery activities during English lessons can develop and improve communicative skills, skills of team work, critical thinking skills, which are important for graduates’ future professional activity.

The article is devoted to the use of cloud services in the formation of ICT competence. The study proves the importance of cloud services and analyzes the use of Google Apps Education Edition cloud technologies, the Moodle distance learning system in the electronic information and educational environment of the university. The authors clarify the didactic opportunities of cloud services and identify the pedagogical conditions for learning when using them. They highlight the methodological aspects of planning the learning process based on the use of cloud services, aimed at improving the level of ICT competence.

The article deals with the concept of "information and communication competence" and its components in accordance with the European Digital Competence Framework. The experience of using information online resources in teaching a foreign language in a university is presented. Based on the survey of graduate students, the author presents the results of their information and communication competence formation level self-assessment.

The paper presents the analysis the influence of electronic and distance learning on the youth as a special group of Internet users. The authors give a review of articles devoted to the problems of information and psychological security of youth.