The purpose of the research covers theoretical justification, practical elaboration and verification of the effectiveness of the developed method of differentiated teaching of professionally oriented English lexical competence in the oral communication of future lawyers. Our state is integrating to the European space rapidly, so there is a dire need in training competitive and well-proficient specialists, in particular in the legal sphere, thus this matter is very topical. As follows, for the training of highly qualified and competent specialists there is a necessity to differentiate the learning process, in particular professionally oriented lexical competence in the oral communication of future lawyers, because the level of English proficiency, motivation, styles of cognitive and educational activity of each student are different. Therefore, despite the attention of scientists to the issue of differentiating the learning process of professionally oriented lexical competence in oral communication, still this problem remains open until the end.
The current state of examination of the problem of law students’ learning professionally oriented oral communication is outlined through the analysis of the scientific researches. Within this issue, the content of communicative competence and its components is determined. Main approaches, principles and methods to the teaching English language by lawyers are outlined.
The content of lexical competence in oral communication, as well as the basic principles and purposes of differentiated learning are determined in the research. The methodological principles of differentiated formation of lexical competence in oral communication by using a case-method are demonstrated. In addition, two close concepts such as “differentiation” and “individualization” are distinguished and the criteria for selecting students for differentiated learning are defined. Particular attention is paid to the definition of the concept and the role of the case-method in the formation of lexical competence in the oral communication of future lawyers.
The case differentiation is done with taking into account the level of students' learning and expected learning outcomes, according to the content of teaching and the content of educational materials. (professionally-oriented vocabulary, authentic / adapted / semi-authentic texts, exercises and tasks, communicative situations within which lexical learning is conducted).
The criteria for selecting lexical material and communicative situations for studying are defined. The stages of working with lexical material are outlined.
Exercises and tasks that make up the content and structure of cases are composed. Exercises and tasks are differentiated according to the level of proficiency. An authorial model of studying, which covers differentiated goals and expected results of teaching, subjects of studying, elements of studying – language and speech; content of studying, subsystem of exercises is proposed. An authorial model consists of 30 thematic micro-modules, within which the communicative-speech situations are projected and certain thematic groups of vocabulary are used. The criteria for evaluating the results of the experiment are determined.
