FOSTERING PROFESSIONAL READING ABILITIES OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE EDUCATION

Abstract

The article addresses the current issue of developing professional reading skills among higher education students in foreign language classes. The growth of globalization and digitalization processes, as well as Ukraine's integration into the European and global educational space, underscore the relevance of students acquiring professionally oriented language competence. The author clarifies the fundamental concept of “professional reading skills,” which should be understood as a complex cognitive activity involving interpretation, analysis, synthesis, and critical comprehension of information. The article identifies the key structural components of professional reading skills, including lexical and terminological, grammaticaland syntactic, strategic, analyticaland critical, and informational and communicative competencies. It is shown that effective work with specialized texts requires a staged organization of learning activities: pre-reading preparation (activation of prior knowledge, familiarization with terminology, and content prediction), reading activities (skimming, scanning, intensive reading, and extensive reading), and post-reading tasks (summarizing, critical analysis, and productive use of information). The article provides examples of tasks for each stage, including matching exercises, gap-filling, answering comprehension questions, and true/false statements. The study emphasizes the interdisciplinary nature of developing professional reading skills and the integration of language competence with subject-specific knowledge. It is demonstrated that the proposed algorithm allows students to develop not only linguistic but also professional and communicative competence, which is a necessary condition for their successful integration into the international academic and professional environment