The article concerns the problem of fostering future border guard officers’ target-language performance by means of warming-up activities. The aim of the article is to track and validate the influence of warming-up activities on the effectiveness of teaching English for Specific Purposes to the cadets of Bohdan Khmelnytskyi National Academy of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine. Regular introduction of the cadets to the warming-up activities during the English classes has enhanced cadets’ target-language performance and communicative competence as well as provided them with real-life contexts and settings, and therefore with adaptable and transferrable skills they can apply in all areas of their academic and professional life including interviewing travelers or impostors on the border. Our hypothesis is that warming-up activities contribute to cadets’ target-language performance in a particular class. It was verified by the experiment which was conducted in 2017-2018 in the form of an interview based on quasi-professional communication with the second year cadets (120 people) of “Law” specialty at Bohdan Khmelnytskyi National Academy of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine. The analysis of the final control assessments conducted by means of using specially adopted the NATO Standardization Agreement (STANAG 6001) table of language proficiency levels for the future border guards’ language requirements, basic terms and procedures demonstrated that warm-ups is a performance potential for cadets of different educational levels and can be used in diverse contexts including real communicative situations in which they learn to solve problems. Analysis has shown that due to the regular use of warming-up activities while conducting a particular English class, the quality of target-language performance has increased, which was confirmed by the cadets’ academic scores. The result of the experiment gives credence to the assertion made earlier that warm-ups does their job: the cadets’ target-language performance in experimental groups has improved at 8.02 (from 78.72 to 86.74), which is much higher than in control groups ‑ at 2,65 (from 79.69 to 82.34). It is safe to say that instructors should take advantage of warming-up activities to catch cadets’ attention, promote motivation and interaction, practice and experiment with the language, which will “at the end of the day” lead to target-language performance enhancement.Keywords: warm-ups, English for specific purposes, cadets, target-language performance, particular English class.

The article reveals the research of social and communicative competence formation of future boatmasters in the process of studying humanities. This competence covers a system of social and communicative knowledge, skills, as well as basic values and personal qualities necessary for effective interpersonal interaction and ensuring the safety of a ship. The structure of social and communicative competence of a future boatmaster is determined by the content of his or her professional activity and covers the following components: personal-value, cognitive-content and activity-effective. The results of the study made it possible to establish the educational reserves for improving the quality of training future boatmasters and forming their social and communicative competence. Taking into account the trends of globalization of the maritime shipping industry and the impact on the professional training of future boatmasters, the influence of postmodernism on formation and development of value orientations of students, the emergence of new social values, it is assumed that formation of social and communicative competence will be effective in case at the Maritime institutions of higher education will be introduced such pedagogical conditions: structuring the content of humanitarian disciplines in accordance with the basic values of social and communicative interaction of future boatmasters; using dialogical methods for the development of future boatmasters skills of interpersonal professional interaction; developing on the basis on contextual training of managerial decision making skills; preparation of teaching staff to forming social and communicative competence of future boatmasters. The effectiveness of pedagogical conditions of the formation of social and communicative competence of future boatmasters in the process of studying humanities was confirmed by the results of the pedagogical experiment. According to the results of the study the cadets of experimental group had mostly high (36.03 %) and average (45.96 %) levels of social and communicative competence formation. In control group, these data were 24.38% and 44.37%, respectively. In this group, the number of cadets with a low level, compared to experimental group, was much higher and amounted to 31.25 % (13.24% more than in experimental group).

The article deals with the problem of influence of the information environment on navigators’ professional activity. It is emphasized that it is a topical issue in the system of higher marine education. It was clarified that at the present stage of training of marine specialists one of the most urgent problems is professional interaction in the process of professional activity. The safety of navigation, as well as the lives of passengers, depend on how effectively a navigator can communicate with crew members, and his level of professional interaction. In the process of professional interaction, navigators face a variety of non-standard and unpredictable situations which require new decisions and communicative understanding. In the study it was noted that the vast majority of vessels have multilingual interational crews, which sometimes are not able to demonstrate necessary professional skills for various reasons, including lack of English, thus endangering passengers, companies, property and environment. An important role is played by professional communicative interaction, which is extremely important for the safety of sea transortation. It is emphasized on the improvement of the process of teaching professional communicative interaction based on the introduction of elements of blended learning.

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