Abstract:

The paper is devoted to the written communication teaching, which is considered a highly important component of higher education, since in the present context, practical command of a foreign language and the skills of written communication are highly appreciated.
Many experts refer to written communication as “the algebra of communication”, its highest and most complicated form. Therefore, expanding writing skills facilitates students’ personal and cultural development.

Written communication is a type of speech activity aimed at constructing a message in written form (articles, essays, resumes, abstracts, business or personal letters, summaries, etc.) in accordance with the communicative goal and linguistic standards.

The primary objective of teaching writing is to develop linguistic, communicative and linguo-cultural competences. To nurture the competences, a teacher will have to impart writing skills most widely applied in the sphere of business communication, such as the skills of writing essays, formal letters, etc. Linguo-cultural competence, in its turn, can be defined as the level of knowledge-based skills required to perceive the basic features of social and cultural development of the target language.

However, despite the fact that the role of foreign language writing has been lately extensively discussed, this type of speech activity is not yet sufficiently covered in the educational process. This is why, the methods of teaching foreign language writing applied in higher educational institutions have to be revised and improved to meet today’s requirements.

Such training is carried out in the process of mastering accompanying communication skills and insights, required to construct written texts and express views and attitudes in written form. Furthermore, students need to learn intercultural peculiarities of written communication reflected in the context of various scenarios of communication. Students should also be able to express their point of view in a well-argued manner, analyze, compare and evaluate facts and events, i.e. possess logical reasoning skills. In this respect, the first item on the agenda is to master the written structure of the target language, since efficient writing essentially implies adequate choice of the type of written message corresponding to communicative situation.

In modern foreign language teaching methodology, various approaches to teaching writing are applied. Some researchers distinguish prescriptive, linguistic, discursive, activity approaches. We will focus on linguistic approach in our paper.

In our practical teaching we distinguish several types of written communication depending on its purpose and sphere of application:
• academic writing (outlines, posts, reviews, essays, etc.);
• business writing (business letters, memos, articles, etc.);
• social writing (notes, private letters, e-mails, etc.);
• personal writing (records of addresses, recipes, etc.);
• creative writing (poetry, short stories, etc.).

In conclusion, the authors consider that a competitive specialist obviously needs to have practical command of a foreign language and the principles of its functioning within the various spheres of written communication. Thus, the role of written communication in communicative competence formation in teaching a foreign language is high. It makes possible to keep linguistic and factual knowledge, stimulates speaking, listening and reading in a foreign language.

Keywords:

Written communication teaching, competence, business communication, scenarios of communication, linguistic approach.