TOPICALITY OF DIGITAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT FOR THE DISCIPLINE “ENGLISH IN DENTISTRY” TO FACILITATE LANGUAGE COMPETENCE ACQUISITION
The article presents relevance and topicality of creating a specific digital learning environment aimed at facilitating language competence acquisition. The latter is a component of professionally oriented foreign language communicative competence acquired by students within the discipline “English in Dentistry” at a medical university. The study depicts the transformation of the teaching scenario during the latest decades. The most common stumbling points in learning a foreign language at a non-linguistic university have been generalized. They have been conferred with the requirements in the Federal State Educational Standard of Higher Education. The stated problem is said to be solved by certain instruments which enable personification of learning trajectories via a specific digital learning environment of the discipline “English in Dentistry”. The process includes two main stages: a diagnostic stage and an instrumental stage. Besides, the article offers a bifocal realization of the said digital learning environment: content-focused and activity-focused. The authors come up with a list of requirements for constructing the digital learning environment. The latter is to provide a student’s personal learning trajectory to facilitate language competence acquisition; ensure their hard and soft skills development that improve their language competence by means of a certain specifically organized set of exercises in the digital format as well as their personal development as agents of their learning activity what involves moulding certain traits of character.