Zaiarna I. Methodology for distance teaching English argumentative writing to prospective legal professionals.

The thesis deals with theoretical substantiation and practical elaboration of the methodology for distance teaching English argumentative writing to prospective legal professionals. The thesis address distance learning as an individualized process of acquiring knowledge, skills and abilities of English argumentative writing by law students, which takes place indirectly through the interaction of distant participants in the educational process in a specialized environment that functions on the basis of modern psycho-pedagogical and information and communication technologies. It has been proved that teaching English argumentative writing should be performed from the perspective of the constructivist, competency-based and genre approaches. They are implemented under the didactic learning principles (proximity, conscientiousness, active participation, visibility), the psychological learning principles (motivation, gradual formation of skills and abilities, individual psychological peculiarities of the student's personality, adaptive processes) and the methodіc learning principles (leading role of communication, authenticity of learning materials, professional orientation of learning, situationality). Case method and the Socratic Method are considered essential in the training process. The purpose of English argumentative writing to prospective legal professionals is to form skills and abilities for free and independent creation of written argumentative legal texts in accordance with established criteria and genre patterns. It has been proved that the content of English argumentative writing include the knowledge of legal component, functional subtypes of argumentative speech; grammatical and lexical skills; abilities to analyze the text from the point of view of the presence of argumentative tactics in it, to define and use the language means of expressing English argumentative writing, compositional and genre-stylistic features of texts, ability to select, plan and organize information in writing, ability to produce completed written texts, arguing their own point of view for with the help of appropriate linguistic means, the ability to find the most typical for the legal community means and means of achieving communicative goals and the implementation of communicative strategies.