Keyword: «interactional competence»

The relevance of the problem under consideration is determined by the fact that foreign language teaching, in particular, English language teaching, is inextricably connected with the development of social interaction skills that in turn fosters a more successful integration into the global community. The research aims at a comprehensive consideration of the concept of interactional competence, its relation to communicative and pragmatic competences as well as the ways of its formation in students of non-linguistic universities. The work is carried out within the framework of the communicative approach that highlights the development of interpersonal intercultural interaction as well as social skills. In addition, the practicability of the inductive approach to the acquisition of interactional resources (communication strategies) becomes relevant as it implies that learning process goes from particular facts, i.e. observed phenomena in live spontaneous speech to general reasoning, i.e. patterns of their use. The study also implements the tenets of the sociocultural theory implying that learning and thought processes are based on the principles of collaboration and communication between people. The research findings are supported by the tenets of conversation analysis allowing to observe the structure of the spoken language and mechanisms of social interaction. The analysis of the academic literature allowed to identify the components of interactional competence such as: topic management, turn management, interactive listening, non-verbal behaviour, breakdown repair. An example of work with some communication strategies within the framework of the inductive approach is provided. The theoretical significance of the study lies in the description of interactional competence expanding on the language nature and opening up new frontiers and opportunities in English language teaching. The practical significance of the work is determined by the possibility of using the findings when developing programs in different educational contexts – linguistic and non-linguistic universities taking into consideration the learners' needs and learning goals. Highlighting the language interactional aspects in curricula provides the opportunity of raising learners' awareness of structure and features of spoken language and lays the foundation for successful communication.