ASPECTS OF THE CONTENT OF BUILDING ENGLISH LEXICAL COMPETENCE IN PROSPECTIVE ECONOMISTS’ SPEAKING

Abstract

The article substantiates the aspects of the content of building English lexical competence in prospective economists’ speaking taking with regard for the essence and structure of this competence. The structure of lexical competence includes: lexical knowledge, perceptive and reproductive lexical skills and lexical awareness. The expedience of analysis of economists’ professional discourse has been grounded; the findings of this analysis have been implemented in the content of building English lexical competence in speaking. It has been found out that on lexical level an English economic discourse is notable for the presence of general and specific terminology, inter-branch terminology, fixed term-collocations, business idioms and abbreviations of economics, economic neologisms, buzzwords, borrowings, verbal expressions of indicators, lexical synonyms and graphical formations. The subject-based component of the content of building English lexical competence in prospective economists’ speaking encompasses dominant spheres and types of oral professionally-oriented communication of economists: professional roles, communicative strategies, communicative aims and purposes, lexical knowledge, language material, no-verbal means of communication, topics, issues and texts and learning strategies. A process-based component of the content of building English lexical competence in prospective economists’ speaking entails: receptive and reproductive lexical skills, vocabulary exercises, abilities of dialogical and monological speeches, abilities and skills to use linguistic and socio-cultural material, exercises to master linguistic and socio-cultural material, knowledge, skills to apply communicative, compensatory and learning strategies, exercises to foster communicative, compensatory and learning strategies.