Keyword: «extracurricular work/activities»

Modern foreign language education is aimed at training a specialist with a sufficiently high level of proficiency in a foreign language to solve professional tasks, which should be ensured by the use of various traditional and innovative methods and approaches in both classroom and extracurricular work. The teaching and educational opportunities of extracurricular activities considered in the article correspond to the main trends in education and determine its relevance. The purpose of the study is to identify the specifics of extracurricular work in teaching a foreign language at a military aviation University. The works of domestic and foreign scientists on the issue under study served as the methodological basis. The most significant approaches for the study were competence-based, professionally oriented and personal activity-oriented approaches, as well as the idea of the inseparable connection between the learning process and the process of educating the student's personality. The authors propose a scientific justification for organizational approaches to defining goals, choosing forms and methods of extracurricular activities that should stimulate the development of students' universal competences, including communication, intercultural interaction, self-organization and self-development, teamwork and leadership, project design and implementation, as well as contribute to the development of a creative personality and spiritual, moral qualities. Foreign language communicative competence is considered by the authors as one of the most important components of the professional competency among modern aviation specialists. As a result, the main forms of extracurricular work in a non-linguistic university are described, depending on the level of cadets’ language training. A theoretical contemplation of the extracurricular work importance in teaching a foreign language and the practical use of the research results will make it possible to build up communicative competence more effectively. The practical significance of the research was reflected in the development and testing of scenarios for conducting extracurricular activities in a foreign language, publication of joint articles based on completed research, the results of training and participation of cadets in foreign language Olympiads which were organized by the Department of Foreign Languages of the Krasnodar Higher Military Flight School.