Studying the mechanisms of language and speech abilities showed that the most effective method of learning a foreign language is a method of total immersion as students enter the natural language environment and are in it constantly. But the learning process in the classroom, no matter how organized and communicative it is, cannot replace the real experience of teaching. As the most important factors for the effective foreign language learning are the language environment and the motivation, thus the development of new motivational language learning environments, including virtual reality (VR) and 3D environment, are the basic elements of the learning process. The development of VR technology allows expanding the boundaries of science and introducing innovations in all spheres of human activity. In the educational establishments of the USA and China, VR environments are already widely used, but in Russia VR is used only in a few schools and universities. The group of teachers of Samara State Technical University designed the new generation educational course of English based on the VR technology that creates a real situational interaction in which the student can receive certain information, to carry out scientific and educational elements, project activities. In such educational space, VR helps students to understand the phenomena and situations that cannot be understood and explained in the traditional techniques, to become part of the real world through the simulation. In general, VR is an ideal learning environment, and the possibility of its technologies for teaching has an extremely high potential for application.

There is a constant need for graduates who possess the skills that are highly sought by employers and can contribute to successful business development. Successful activity of a specialist is conditioned by two categories of skills: hard and soft skills. When talking about hard skills, we refer to direct technical knowledge. On the opposite, soft skills refer to communication, team work, creativity, problem solving and other personal skills. Experts agree that beside hard (technical) skills, soft (also called people-) skills are necessary. The research presents the basic groups of soft skills an engineer specialist needs for a successful professional activity: basic communication skills, selfmanagement skills, skills of effective thinking, management skills. This paper calls for the development of soft skills through the interdisciplinary form of the educational process in order to increase the employability of graduates. We considered intrapersonal, interpersonal and systemic levels of interdisciplinary students' engagement which are relevant to the soft skills groups. The appropriate organizational form for these skills development is an interdisciplinary project team, which facilitates the acquisition of the soft skills. In other words, it is necessary to imitate working environment in the educational process to equip students with the skills required.

In the paper the concept of "situation" in a linguistic context is discusses, and is defined as a complex of interrelated events occurring in a particular place and time. The difference between situations and events is explained, thus events are considered as part of the situation. The event structure of the situation is proposed, which includes the composition of its participants (actants) and their role in the interaction that binds them in a given situation, as well as the circonstants. With the help of the frame/script description, a characteristic of such class of situations as a situation of confrontation is proposed.

Globalization and innovation have recently resulted in the extensive use of the latest technological products practically everywhere, and in education especially. Various technologies are now employed in different spheres of education. Virtual Reality (VR) is a global innovative technology with great potentials and enormous pedagogical possibilities that offers new methods and techniques for education. The main features of it are visibility, security, involvement, presence and focusing. It enables to combine the computer-generated virtual information and the real environment in real time. The presented VR language program is based on the concept of 3D modeling and semantic frame method.

The problem of modeling of semantic structure of similative phraseological units is described. With the use of formal meta language SESAME invented for the purposes of the conducted semantic analyses (a meaningful acronym of Standard Events and Situations Artificial Meta-language) on the basis of frame-scenario models, the authors made an attempt to analyze the transferred meaning and in particular the degree of modeling potential, the degree of explicitness / implicitness, the degree of semantic dividedness / integrity and the scale of the denotative area of English similative phraseological units. Similative phraseological units under consideration can be comparative, metaphoric or allegoric.