WAYS TO FORM ENGLISH LANGUAGE ACADEMIC TEXTUAL COMPETENCE

Abstract

Summary. The concept of academic textual competence and the principles of its improvement among students of universities of any profile have been stated in the article. The monopoly of English language in academic papers writing and publishing all over the world has been emphasized. The article deals with primarily academic writing the traditions of which were constituted globally long ago thanks to efforts of both educators and scientists, on the one hand, and the editors of scientific journals, on the other hand. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu first introduced the term “academic discourse” meaning the achievement of the proper level of academic literacy in university students. It was him who stated the existence of “linguistic misunderstanding” between a professor and a student because the latter may lack relevant competencies, also because of the existing relationship system. The authors of the article consider the achievement of the proper level of academic literacy while studying English at Ukrainian universities the much more complicated problem due to objective reasons. To solve it, in their opinion, it is necessary to proceed from the principles of academic writing that had been formed in the world, such as clarity and clear structure of the scientific text understood as a monotype differentiated only by genres. In addition, the specific language functions characteristic for this style are to be taken into account, e.g.: evidence-based, critical thinking, being cautious, classifying and listing, compare and contrast, defining terms, describing trends, describing quantities, explaining causality, giving examples, and signaling transitions. The application of these language functions has been illustrated by the examples from academic phrasebanks. The content of this relatively new phenomenon in academic writing where some neutral phrases from research articles and theses are used has been explained. Some recommendations as for writing and editing of academic papers in English have been given.