In the modern conditions of globalization, there are new requirements for university graduates. They should not only know a foreign language, but also a well-formed intercultural competence. The authors distinguish cultural interpretation as one of the ways of forming intercultural competence. Cultural interpretation helps to identify the national and cultural specifics of idioms, in which there is information about the world of a particular country, its lifestyle, and traditions. The internal form of idioms contains a set of cultured ideas about the world picture of a particular society. The idioms with the ornithonym component reflect the specific division of this sphere of reality. This language layer has not been sufficiently studied. The authors give the linguoculturological analysis of the Russian and English idioms with the components “swallow” and “peacock”. Culture codes and sources of cultural interpretation are analyzed from the cultural and linguistic points of view. The Russian and English idioms with the ornithonyms are compared. The authors conclude that the comparative analysis of idioms shows the difference in the linguistic world views and sheds light on the ethnic logic. The research findings can be used in teaching a foreign language to comprehend the culture of native speakers.

The authors investigate the problem of monitoring learning outcomes, which contributes to improving the quality of training of university graduates. The tools of the Moodle e-learning environment to monitor learning activity of students are considered. The possibilities that Moodle services provide to the teacher to improve the quality of course resources, as well as the effectiveness of student learning are identified. The Moodle educational environment (modular object-oriented dynamic learning environment) is a free learning management system focused primarily on interaction between the teacher and students, although it is also suitable for conducting traditional distance courses, as well as supporting in-person training. The study shows that by means of Moodle, a teacher can create courses, filling them with content in the form of texts, auxiliary files, presentations, questionnaires, tests, etc. As a part of the study, the authors created an electronic training course “Fundamentals of Financial Computing” with an emphasis on the use of the interactive control and measurement complex of the development of the discipline. The monitoring of students’ cognitive potential as a component of mathematical competence was carried out. The results of pedagogical measurements are presented, which demonstrate the positive dynamics of the quality of subject education in the conditions of informatization of life spheres.