Preschool age is the most favorable period for mastering languages due to a number of psychological factors. This is the age of potential children’s opportunities, the period of intensive development of language abilities. Therefore, an indispensable pedagogical condition for the development of early bilingualism is the creation of a favorable educational environment for children. The aim of the study is to study the development of cognitive regulation in connection with the communicative competence of balanced bilinguals (Tatar / Russian) and monolinguals (Russian), whose socialization is carried out in different developing subject-spatial environments.
The research methodology is based on sociocultural concepts of “environmental” influences on the mental development (Vygotsky, 1999; Bronfenbrenner, 1999). The empirical study involved 60 children aged 5 to 7 years, among them 30 balanced bilinguals socializing in a bilingual (Tatar/Russian) environment, and 30 monolinguals in a Russian-speaking linguistic environment.
To diagnose the development of children’s cognitive regulation, children’s subtests of the NEPSY-II neuropsychological battery were used: “Repetition of sentences”, “Memory for construction”, “Inhibition”, “Sorting cards according to a changeable attribute”; communicative competence in communication – the methods of “Pictures” by E.O. Smirnova and E.A. Kalyagina, “Peculiarities of interpersonal relations for children” by G.R. Khuzeeva; level of general intelligence – a children’s version of the Raven Test methodology. Statistical processing of the obtained data was carried out using the non-parametric U-Mann-Whitney test, Spearman correlation analysis.
Conclusions and recommendations. It has been established that balanced bilinguals in older preschool age, compared with monolinguals, have advantages in cognitive regulation, in particular, in updating non-verbal information in the linguistic context of the target language (visual working memory), blocking and suppressing irrelevant verbal and non-verbal information (inhibitory control). Bilingual preschoolers are more active in communication, but less prone to leadership and dominance in a peer group, while monolingual children readily take on a leading role in a group with a desire for a high social position in a peer group. Differences in the convergence of indicators in groups of preschoolers were revealed, in particular, in the group of monolingual children, indicators of cognitive regulation are significantly associated with indicators of communicative competence, while in the group of balanced bilinguals they are with indicators of general intelligence as the ability to use mental operations in solving cognitive problems. We assume that the content of the educational program for the older group of monolinguals in the preschool educational institution is focused primarily on social and communicative development, while for bilinguals it is focused on cognitive and speech development.
Keyword(s) : communicative competence
Assessment of communicative competence of resident doctors
The problem of assessing the communicative competence of future doctors at all stages of training
in a medical university is one of the most relevant in the theory and practice of medical education in
Russia. The article reveals the basic principles of building a methodology for integrated assessment
of the communicative skills of students and residents on the basis of multilateral assessment. The
basic (universal) communication techniques for the doctor are determined – active listening,
asking questions, advising and motivating patients, and an explanation, which include a number of
communication skills required by the doctor.
The study examined and analyzed self-assessment (n = 132) and expert evaluation (n = 100) of
communicative competence among residents, as well as the subjective perception of the data
obtained by the residents. The results of self-assessment and expert assessment of communicative
competence showed that self-assessment of all communication techniques that make up the core of
communicative competence is statistically significantly lower than the expert assessment (p< 0.001).
It is shown that the method of multilateral assessment ensures the development of reflexivity and
motivation of residents to improve communication skills.
Features of the Development of Professional, Bilingual Communicative Competence of the Teacher
The article is devoted to the characteristics of professional-communicative competence of teachers in bilingual education. Nowadays the society faces an urgent need to go beyond the paradigm of education, to expand the content not in quantitative, but in qualitative terms. The relevance of this work is connected with insufficient level of elaboration of the technology of improvement of professional-communicative competence of a teacher in conditions of bilingualism. The research objective is to identify and systematize the priority components of bilingual competence, its features, structure on the basis of functional analysis of knowledge resources of professional multifunctional activity of a teacher. The article gives a brief description of communicative-cultural bilingual teacher, considers indicators of bilingual competence, as well as the most appropriate means for its use to improve the quality of the educational process. The leading technologies of the research of this problem are the techniques of mastering the types of bilingual speech activity, the principles of aspect-integrated learning; self-motivation, student-oriented bilingual communication. The article reflected the results of this work, during which teachers gradually mastered the characteristics of bilingual vocational training as important indicators of the quality level of professional skills. The article can be useful for practical professional activity of teachers in secondary schools.