Developing foreign language communicative competence through political discourse idioms: a linguodidactic perspective
Introduction. The study of idiomatic expressions in political media discourse is a relevant area of modern linguodidactics, since these units serve not only as carriers of imagery, but also as a tool to influence mass consciousness. The strategic use of idioms, particularly in D. Trump's speech samples, requires the development of special methodological approaches to English course. The purpose of this article is to analyze the linguodidactic potential of English idioms based on the speech practice of an American politician and to develop pragmatic-oriented tasks for the formation of foreign-language communicative competence of students through discourse-based activities. Materials and methods. The study is of a combined nature, integrating linguistic analysis and didactic methods. The source base consists of 15 public speech data by D. Trump, selected by continuous sampling. The teaching component of the study is implemented through the methods of designing educational tasks and modeling real-life situations, which allow creating certain learning tasks and educational environment, enabling the implementation of a didactic complex for developing students' communicative competence. Results. The study reveals that idioms used in political discourse serve manipulative and simplifying functions, enabling effective target audience influence. A complex of tasks (video analysis, role-playing debates, linguocultural analysis, essay writing) is developed to foster skills in recognizing, interpreting, and critical understanding of idioms. Pilot testing demonstrates statistically significant academic skills improvement: the ability to explain the meaning of idioms in the context is 53.4%, and the adequate use of idioms in discourse-based classroom activities is 66.7%. Conclusion. The effectiveness of political discourse idiomatic expressions for a foreign language teaching/learning process is approved to be the integral part for developing not only language skills of students, but also their critical thinking ability, media literacy and cross-cultural communicative competence, that corresponds to the modern requirements for training future specialists in higher education institutions.
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