Formation of student’s hypertext competence using hypertext technologies

Abstract

The formation of hypertext competence emerges from a combination of methods, tools and technologies that provide communication between hypertext network devices with the aim of transmitting information. The information transmitted may be diverse depending on its type and content and is intended to be used collectively through network information and communication resources, where the network language and culture differ from traditional speech practices. The difference here lies at the macro level, i.e. at the level of texts, and at the micro level, the level of lexeme transformation, at the level of meaning and form, different from the norms existing in the language system of the community. Moreover, the level of fact acquisition and, as a result, memorization increase when the information is structured, taking into account common features, which are relevant for students. Objectivity, integrity and network identity pay an important role there. The formation of hypertext competence is carried out in the course of environment-oriented training, which means that a foreign language is acquired in natural situational conditions.

Introduction

At present, it is necessary to teach students a foreign language as a comprehensive means of communication in the context of new communication forms based on hypertexts, when a high level of language proficiency is important. Hypertext is an information and communication environment where the language is realized and where, it is possible to effectively solve the issue of forming student’s linguistic and communicative competence. This leads us to the concept of a secondary linguistic personality. According to this concept the formed secondary linguistic personality, as an indicator of human ability to participate in intercultural communication (Khaleeva, 1989; Nechaev, 2012), is fully represented in the hypertext network.

The French-speaking segment of the hypertext network is a special educational and interactive environment for the implementation of cognitive activities. Here, the student can compensate for the lack of knowledge on certain topics and insufficient preparedness in the field of specific interactive activities, which require a whole range of linguistic and psycho-pedagogical knowledgee. This knowledge can equip the student with techniques and skills that will help them to use the hypertext network, and as a result, complement the existing methods of teaching foreign languages. At the same time, students can establish a multi-level connection between parts of textual information, create original ways of extracting various linguistic, sociocultural, methodological materials from the network in the form of self-modified information blocks, pedagogical scripts. Students can enter the system of French universities to work in specially created projects for solving specific methodological problems in research activities. Such work will help to prepare students for a contact with another culture and adequate speech behavior in different conditions. The student needs to implement their educational activities in online lectures and seminars in order to accumulate experience for solving linguistic, methodological, professional and non-professional tasks when interreacting with foreign language hypertext. At the same time, it is important for students to know how communication is built in the network, and to understand what elements comprise it, why errors occur and how to prevent them, how to understand language neologisms and new constructions in order to be able to achieve text adequacy when reproducing information.

In hypertexts, there are other sources of information different from traditional ones. Bredel (2008) considers hypertext from several points of view: “On the one hand, this is a special way of presenting, organizing a text, on the other hand, it is a new kind of text, which is opposed to a usual text. Finally, it is a tool and a new technology for studying the text”. Immersing into authentic communication situations of a pragmatic and sociocultural nature, hypertext enters into micro- and macro-models of multimedia projects developed by scientific and methodological centers of European universities. There, scientists give their lectures, conduct seminars, and students, using multimedia, connect to them through additional network features in order to achieve communicative competence, where communicative orientation of the educational process is the goal of learning in the new conditions. Students need to immerse themselves in the simulated future professional environment of the hypertext space, participate in virtual associations of specialists. They are involved in research and, in the course of interpersonal communication, learn new technologies using cognitive skills. There is a need not only to search, find, read and understand the necessary information, but also to design it, compress and process. The problem here is how to perceive and understand the variety of foreign texts in hypertext, in an intercultural space.

There is a need for students to master systemic information about the functions of hypertexts for better orientation in the information environment. Thus, it is necessary to have the skills and abilities to work with hypertext information in order to correlate complex disparate fragments of text blocks, correlate the general content with the specific one, and purposefully search and use the missing educational and methodological information in the network, master the skills of goal-setting, hypothesizing, analyzing textual material. Moreover, learners acquire not only lexical, grammatical and stylistic knowledge from the text, but also gain skills in written communication etiquette (Vishniakov and Dunaeva, 2017: 147).

It is necessary to increase the efficiency and quality of students' training, create opportunities for them to develop the ability to autonomously learn and improve a foreign language, activate their personal potential, and acquire a hypertext competence in the field of information technology. Hypertext competency includes not only the linguistic component, but also the pragmatic one: the ability to use various types of multimedia and interactive texts in the network. The hypertextual competence, being a kind of analogue of textual competence in classical linguistics, contributes to the development of students' skills to acquire knowledge starting from a basic level, and rising to the methodological level, which corresponds to the current requirements of learning. Any learning system will only meet its purpose if it fulfills the learning objectives in new social conditions. The technology of forming hypertext competence and, accordingly, the methodology of teaching foreign languages based on electronic hypertexts can fulfill this objective because is aimed at improving the linguistic and professional training of students, and at the same time is a part of foreign language teaching system.

Discussion

Approaches

Scientists note that the main theories, on which teaching foreign languages ​​using new technologies are based, are cognitive psychology and constructivism theories. The feature of the first approach is associated with modeling cognitive processes using a computer and with applying this model to solve the problems of learning process management (Bailly, 1998: 14). The feature of the second approach is that it connects the learning process with theories of constructivism. Constructivist experience is not only about the information being taken, processed and stored, but also about one’s own experience of constant changes in the cognitive structure (Rabardel, 1995: 137–140). From the point of view of constructivism, pedagogical communication in the foreign language segment of the network should be understood both as a process of social construction and as a process of individual construction. This means that the learning environment should take place in a foreign-language cultural environment, where culture is a combination of concepts and relationships expressed in paradigms and styles.

Hypertext learning environment

L.A. Dunaeva notes that the Internet as a communicative space can be interesting in three directions: as an unlimited source of information, as an opportunity for virtual learning, as a source of new words, new terminology, new stylistic variants of colloquial speech. Global networks are an important source of scientific and educational information. Students’ emersion in the foreign environment of global networks with support and guidance from the teacher increases significantly the duration and effectiveness of their contact with the target language (Vishniakov and Dunaeva, 2017: 146). Immersion in a foreign language culture occurs, for example, through foreign language in multimedia communities. Models of classes appear, which make simulation of real environments (bilingual classes, schools) possible. With their help, any authentic situations are possible. When the learning environment is based on hypermedia, the student generates their own hypertext. In this case, learning is based on the context.

Such models require a complex contextual situational environment. Cognition is directly related to communication, which implies the process of receiving, processing and transmitting information. On the basis of this information the picture of the world is formed. The network is characterized by a different form and structure of the interactive information field. There are no isolated texts in it, each message is associated with hyperlinks. The source text retains its meaning, but also acquires a different significance through non-linear impact. In this case information acts as knowledge presented in linguistic form. The simulated network environment is a newly formed, authentic situation, which is possible with the help of technical means.

The principle of network hypertext communication may complicate any form of systematization in learning, as it is based on the idea that the knowledge structure is constantly being changed and enhanced in a hypertext environment, because the text arises while the person is reading. This is the concept of communicative didactics as a constructivist model.

The paradigm of education is changing; a personality-oriented approach to learning is carried out, the structure of the learning process is changing. A paradigm appears as a body of knowledge; it determines the range of basic scientific problems and possible solutions. Within the framework of the methodological paradigm of teaching foreign languages, a number of problems occur: learning in virtual reality; choosing lexical and phraseological units in the process of communication in the network; implementing foreign language discourse in the network, etc. Specialists studying the problem of cognitive analysis of discourse note that in the process of discursive activity the user acts both as a subject of perception and as a subject of discourse generation.

This position underlies the cognitive model of dialogue, which should reflect not only the processes and mechanisms for processing language information, but also the processes for processing interactively significant information.

The virtual reality model also presents challenges. Researchers who developed the theory of mental spaces distinguish different spaces: identification, spatio-temporal, as well as complex configurations of these mental models. Since discourse requires a constant return to the same reference entities, access to conceptual elements remains open, and if necessary, you can return to any of the created mental spaces. Thus, one of the problems is the description of how to create a situation or an object in the network. It is known that the creation of a new meaning in the human brain is an active process of establishing various connections, where various aspects of information are integrated, i.e. long-term and short-term information. Accordingly, it is necessary to determine the creation of a situation or an object. “We do not see the space of the world, we experience our own vision, we do not see the colors of the real world, we experience our own chromatic space” (Manturana & Varela, 2001).

Thus, teaching a foreign language is based on the native language. The student begins to speak a foreign language based on their subjective construction of knowledge. The objectivity of knowledge construction can only be verified in practice. This means that by engaging students in the process of reflecting on their own mistakes, the teacher purposefully prepares them for future professional and social activities, helps to acquire the skills for choosing right strategies, as well as the skills for evaluating their results. Thus, the model of activity includes such components as the analysis of possible sources of educational information and immersion in a simulated professional linguistic environment.

When a teacher gives students the same role model, they copy it in different ways, i.e. each student constructs their own model, depending on their ability to reproduce foreign language speech.

Only by applying a foreign language in practice, and by interacting with a native speaker of the studied language, the student will find out if the constructed model is correct or not. Practice in a hypertext environment will provide what cannot be obtained from a textbook or from a teacher. The modern point of view on the problem of the psychological aspect when organizing work in the hypertext network relies on various paradigms, including the humanitarian paradigm (Abramov and Kovriga, 2001: 150). According to it, the acquisition of information is extraction of knowledge that is transformed into information when passing from one native speaker to another.

Knowledge construction

In the most vivid form, the notion of “knowledge” was demonstrated in the work of Drucker (1994: 53): “knowledge is “text-human”. In this case, the text can be understood by students as a material body (as “material bodies” of signs, which are its components).

Learning is the process of reconstructing previous knowledge, followed by reflection. Knowledge is transferred to the student socially, i.e. arise in a social context. The use of information technology is necessary for exchanging and disseminating knowledge and information, so that it can circulate freely.

Thus, hypertext is a multifunctional formation of various skills. In the Generative Theory of Multimedia Learning (Mayer Richard, 2003), the work with hypertext is viewed as an active process when a student selects visual and verbal information, processes it, and as a result, constructs new knowledge. Information can become knowledge, when the student uses it in practice. The following levels of knowledge are distinguished:

textural (knowledge of facts, concepts, terms);

operational (the ability to perform actions according to the established model, the rule of finding solutions);

heuristic (construction of procedures for original solutions in the context of a virtual environment).

Declarative knowledge is acquired by a person along with the accumulation of experience in learning a foreign language. The student can experiment with new connections by building their own structures. This is a self-organized learning, which is based on hypertext. It provides the student with flexibility in time, an individual pace of work, material that corresponds to their desires and needs, the possibility of reviewing the learning material.

In a multimedia environment, you must rely on procedural knowledge. Procedural knowledge is instructive (knowledge of instructions) and situational (ability to act in specific situations). Information can become knowledge if the student has practice using it. Based on hypertext, any work with information is possible: you can take information from the network by reading it or making copies; create your own information or compile it from the proposed hypertext materials; use information for further processing; for cognitive activity of constructing knowledge and mastering the learning situation.

Students construct knowledge themselves. This activity can be realized in classes based on an open system in the network, where the student is a researcher conducting a search in hypertexts. In the basis of situational learning lie cognitive personality processes and the theory of behavioral psychology, which explores behavioral factors. Situational learning presupposes constructing knowledge in a way that can allow knowledge to be used in real life, in communication with other participants. Situational learning is based on Internet resources as a means of information and communication. A foreign language is mastered when it is used in natural conditions, when students acquire the knowledge of vocabulary and grammar presented implicitly and receive new information from a linguistically rich environment.

A number of scientists (Davydov et al., 1996: 68) argue that new information technologies mediate learning activities, which creates the prerequisites for the development of important thought processes: reflection, analysis, planning and understanding. The authors note such areas of activity modification that contribute to the development of creativity when working with multidimensional graphics in the form of diagrams, tables, video clips. There are more opportunities for carrying out search in the information array of the network, the possibility to return to the intermediate stages of complex work in the network. The methodological discussion is based on the paradigm of information processing, which is the main part of the study in cognitive theories.

To understand information means to cognitively process it. A mental operation has an exact sequence: determining a goal, choosing an operation to solve the problem. Mastering knowledge is not a simple transfer of information that students passively perceive, but rather an active creation of reality in an interactive context. Learning is represented by the process of generating an individual constructive model of reality. To create not a fragmented, but a single structure of knowledge in the student’s cognitive mind becomes a new cognitive aspect of the developing educational situation. This structuring leads to a change of roles, to the independent use of new media, to the mastery of knowledge, where a balance is maintained between instruction and self-development, production of text for communication in the network. Willingness to use information resources includes acquiring experience based on the emotional orientation of personality and values. In this case, the following results are revealed: the external result, when you can see, comprehend, apply skills in real practice, and the internal result, when the experience of the activity becomes the property of the student. The aspects of media competence and social competence come to the fore, where learning using hypertext technologies is explained from the standpoint of constructivism, cognitive theories and theories of information processing, knowledge organization, decision-making management, attention and memory issues.

We are talking about learning a foreign language, where the main postulate will be the requirement for authenticity of materials, integration in the hypertext cultural environment of native speakers, authenticity of the text in the hypertext cultural environment, and requirements for simulated situations in the classroom.

Constructivist approach analysis

The analysis of the constructivist approach by L.S. Vygotskij (1983) is based on four basic principles. When this analysis is applied to the modern hypertext conditions, it shows that:

learning and development are social activities like interaction with native speakers of the studied language, not only as a way of transferring information, but also as a modern way of solving problems based on hypertexts;

learning is understood as an experimental process, which is represented by the experience of working in the network. Here students are ready to complete tasks with the help of native speakers from the network, and with the help of encyclopedias, electronic dictionaries, etc.;

learning a foreign language takes place in a context significant for the student. For example, when learning French using hypertexts, it is necessary to search by keywords in the French-speaking network;

the combination of interdisciplinary experience of students with their objective experience; applying hypertext space to the needs of your own learning; conducting scientific work.

Thus, hypertext is:

a means of learning and independent work for a future specialist; learning area for student research and network communication, when the student is able to use a foreign language in accordance with the context, learning goals and assignments; a way of self-organization in work, when the learning process is structured and organized so that everything is aimed at solving problems, the end result and at a constructive dialogue with communication partners in the network;

a tool for network communication with representatives of other countries, specialists in a particular area of ​​scientific knowledge; communication based on the functions of archiving texts, chats, blogs, which allows at the end of communication to analyze a text and its vocabulary, grammar, style, and on this basis to construct new types of knowledge, to establish the first language contact between a student and a native speaker of the studied language.

As a result, a specific cognitive environment is created in the network, the main characteristics of which are:

interactivity – interaction between students on the basis of network resources, which is supported at the technical and methodological level as participation in situations;

hypertextuality – saturated information environment, the organization and usability of this information environment through special techniques; learning is characterized as an active process in which the student constructs new knowledge based on their past experience;

multimediality – the possibility to integrate this environment with almost any other system (educational, scientific, etc.) at the organization level; providing a high speed of information exchange, the ability to control the learning process, maintain feedback, regularly update information and adjust it if necessary.

Hypertext is also considered as:

a product of complex activities for generating text and receiving textual information occurring in the field of socio-psychological factors of intercultural communication;

a unit of text-based learning and text-based instructional online communication;

a tool for solving the methodological problems of organizing and managing textual activity in the context of network communication when teaching foreign languages. At the same time, the student not only comprehends textual information, but also creates their own hypertext, which implies mental activity.

Educational hypertext communication

According to A.N. Bogomolov, the use of electronic communication in the learning process involves specific activities for students, since such interaction takes place in an informational, technological and educational space (Bogomolov, 2009: 43). In the learning process, it is advisable to optimally use the information sequence, allowing to provide maximum information within a minimum period of time. The use of network materials is an excellent background simulating various segments of reality. It is also important to remember that hypertext is “a cultural phenomenon, a new format of cultural virtual reality” (Kastell’s, 2004: 64). Means of hypertext communication help bring students' cognitive activity closer to the methods of science research, creating a cultural model of education.

The communicative capabilities of global networks should not leave methodologists indifferent. This is not only about making full use of the educational opportunities of e-mail, chat rooms, forums and newsgroups for methodological purposes, but also about enhancing your own communication with students, make it more personal and diverse. Sustainable correspondence between the teacher and the students is not necessarily an educational activity - it is rather a real communication between colleagues who do business and solve professional and personal problems. Within this model of communication, students master not only lexical, grammatical, stylistic skills, but also acquire etiquette skills for written communication.

Many studies have shown that working in a telecommunication environment with the aim of obtaining linguistic, regional and professional information develops the cognitive abilities of students, has an intellectual and emotional impact on them, and serves to actively form their linguistic consciousness. The telecommunication environment also helps to overcome the psycholinguistic difficulties in learning a foreign language, as well as provides cultural understanding through constructive communication activities with native speakers.

The work of students in educational hypertext communication allows you to individualize the teaching-learning process taking into account the interests of students, increase the intensity of their work, as well as teach them how to analyze materials and draw independent conclusions. The integration of the French-speaking segment in the educational process makes it possible to effectively solve such didactic tasks as:

improve reading skills, directly using network materials of various degrees of complexity;

improve listening skills based on authentic audio texts of the network;

improve writing skills in order to enrich students’ active and passive vocabulary of the modern French language;

to acquaint students with cultural realities, including speech etiquette, speech behavior of the French in communication, culture, traditions of the country of the studied language (in our case, France);

to form a sustainable motivation activity in a foreign language on the basis of the systematic use of authentic materials and in compliance with the principle of life communication;

conduct training focusing on the process of learning in the network, where tasks require authentic learning scenarios, where there is no traditional form of communication of the material and no exact lesson scenario in the form of instructions, when everything is aimed at processing materials, understanding and acquiring knowledge.

Educational discourse is interesting in a way that it can become a favorable area for subject understanding by all participants in the learning process. The texts in the educational discourse arise as a result of the creative activity of their authors, using technologies for fixing their own experience in the network. The hypertext generated by the student is also useful for others, as it can be used to “refine/polish” a foreign language and for a deeper understanding of written speech in discourses. The more complex the discourse (the combination of texts and the rules for their generation), the greater the role played by the network interactions is, i.e. interaction between a native speaker and a student. The teacher also hones their understanding of the issue being studied, generating their own educational texts and comments that are used by students in the learning process. Thus, the authentic context as well as the authentic environment give the student the opportunity to get out of the role of a person acting according to instructions. This is an environmentally oriented learning, thanks to which students actively acquire new knowledge, skills for working in a hypertext communication network. In the course of professional discourse in the form of self-interpretations of individual experience, the student's future professional activity is reflected. Therefore, the student needs to understand the structure of hypertexts, various combinations of pictures, graphs, texts used to expand information; know what methods to give preference to and how they will work in new conditions and correspond to the methodology of teaching foreign languages; how to implement innovations, etc. In other words, the student’s task is to organize their own cognitive activity. And the teacher’s task is to teach students to acquire knowledge autonomously. They must be able to navigate freely in the acquired knowledge, put it into practice, form their own opinion and know how to use previously acquired knowledge to obtain new knowledge as the basis for further education. In order for multimedia material to become a teaching tool for learning a foreign language, it must meet a number of requirements, the main of which is methodological relevance. If authentic material is interesting not only from an informational, but also from a language point of view, its informational aspect will contribute to the development of language skills.

Therefore, to understand the process of teaching a foreign language, it is important to determine how to present the lexical basis of the language more effectively, taking into account the consistent semantic changes in vocabulary due to the changes in social and political life in the world. Network based communication and Internet materials may serve this purpose, as they reflect historical, economic and social changes happening in society. Communication in the network has a specific nature, presupposes different contexts, an emotional reaction to a message, briefness of a message, although each element of it carries a large information load. In virtual reality, there is an anonymous flow of speech (written speaking), and it requires a different form of organization. The teacher’s task is to develop “filters” for the correct understanding of real things; to form stable structures in the student’s mind. These structures are relatively invariant, but at the same time act as cultural and value criteria for the selecting and processing information. The most effective method is to develop students’ critical thinking and reflection. Critical thinking is characterized by the ability to analyze incoming information, adequately evaluate their actions, identify and correct errors. Specific forms of communication occur on the basis of hypertext, when students find themselves in a different culture in a virtual situation, when previous skills of social behavior do not work, and they have to master new skills in a new learning environment.

Hypertext competence

The student gains new experience of language projects in the network, when they are forced to structure, organize, plan, explore network resources, master the models of social behavior through practical reproduction of situations. In this respect, it is vital to form hypertext competence, which is based on the development of cognitive abilities of students, on the creative perception of the hypertext content in the network, on the development of personal network experience as a new culture of communication in the network.

By hypertext competence is implied the ability to apply a foreign language appropriately to the context, goals and tasks, use information and any resources in educational activities, become self-organized, organize a constructive dialogue with others. Mastering such a competence will help the student to virtually be in a foreign language learning situation, ask questions and receive answers from university professors, native speakers of the language being studied, which helps to establish a connection between educational activities and real-life situations.

Moreover, this kind of competence involves the ability to read, write and understand the main content of network texts, the ability to perceive language abstraction, the ability to express oneself through mastering the skills of working with various types of hypertexts in a foreign language. Mastering these skills is focused on creating knowledge about the hypertext multimedia space, when the student can acquire social skills, start communication in a foreign language. We are talking about textual competence when a student creates a new text while working and reading in the network. This ability is based on the skills of self-organization of the cognitive process as a process of reproducing speech and writing language. This process takes place inside the brain and outside it, in the space of multimedia networks, as a process of synergistic and constructivist interaction of the brain with obvious and non-obvious objects.

It is important to point out that hypertext competence includes multimediality, interactivity and hypertextuality.

Multimediality involves acquiring the following network models:

the use of virtual environments (virtual projects, blogs, participation in network collegial associations, in distance learning etc.);

Organization of personal information (receiving, verifying, evaluating, using electronic dictionaries, encyclopedias, electronic abstracts);

hypertext creativity (animation, films, electronic newspapers, video exhibitions using an electronic camera);

communication between remote communicants, which is less associated with speaking, word and sound, but is carried out through hypertext, image, shape, color;

Professional communication in the French-speaking segment of the network.

Based on these models, skills useful for solving specific problems are formed and fixed, which determines the level of hypertext competence: the ability to work with media texts, engage with various types of texts in the hypertext structure. Such a context is favorable for considering the problems of self-organization when working in the network, since the problem of knowing the hypertext network is the problem of knowing new forms of dialogue and communication.

Interactivity implies the skills for establishing contacts with the most important search engines, intercultural portals, servers; with native speakers of the studied language, engaging in teleconferences, chats, blogs, projects, virtual seminars, network lectures specially developed by scientific and methodological centers, universities of different countries of the world.

Furthermore, interactivity is the ability to learn a foreign language interactively as it is based on the ability to organize cognitive activity in a dialogue mode, when everyone is involved in the process of cognition and has the ability to reflect on what everyone knows. To learn a foreign language and teach this process online is to conduct direct communication in a foreign language in the network. It is assumed that the student, gaining knowledge about the language being taught and the culture of the language being studied, has the opportunity to use this knowledge through tasks and through communication with communication partners. The student has a large field for research, because this is a multi-level education including virtual lectures and seminars, electronic textbooks. Thus, interactive learning is a dialogue learning, in the course of which interaction becomes a special form of organization of cognitive activity. It presupposes quite specific and predictable goals. One of these goals is the creation of certain learning conditions, i.e. conditions in which students feel their intellectual viability, which makes the learning process productive. The essence of such training is the organization of the educational process, in which almost all students are involved in the cognitive process, they have the ability to understand and reflect on what they know and think, switch their attention, and be able to change forms of activity.

It is especially important that the proposed environment provides a deeper content as a pedagogical tool and expands the sphere of interpersonal relations that are established between the subjects of education in interaction (Vishniakov and Dunaeva, 2017: 112). Communication in the environment contributes to the emergence of various styles of interaction in the study group, where each participant, who has a combination of individual knowledge and skills, shares them with their colleagues, expanding the “zone of proximal development” (L.S. Vygotskij). It has become possible to include experts in the field of knowledge studied by students, project partners and other speakers of the studied language in the educational activity, and therefore, in the zone of proximal development. Thus, the environment obtains “the functions of a real organization of educational activity in which theoretical knowledge is acquired in the form of ongoing dialogue and discussion and communication” (Davydov, 1996: 517). As a result, it becomes possible to creatively explore the foreign-language world, which is possible through interaction with other people and through reconstruction of one’s previous experience.

Hypertextuality implies the ability to work with hypertext, since hypertext is the network structure where information is encoded in hypertexts. The hypertextual system equips students with a tool for navigating the network through modules and links, makes it possible to explore hypertext modules, conducting a search and interactive exchange of necessary information; modify hypertext modules, use sound information, view video clips or video documents as part of hypertext. In addition, hypertext systems make it possible to compose modules from different fragments, types of hypertexts. The hypertext competence is considered as the ability to:

work with the text in the unity of its contextual connections and dependence on sociocultural, psychological and linguistic factors;

be intentional, which means that hypertext always acts as a situationally determined action;

have text-generating skills related to the process of creating a text as a complex linguistic sign;

have dialogue in the network, emphasizing the dialogical nature of all communication processes, regardless of the oral or written form, but having the features of one of the forms;

have hypertext-based capabilities to compose unlimited speech messages with a communicative-pragmatic effect.

In hypertext competence, it is necessary to distinguish the components of its structure:

gnostic-motivational component (students are aware of the tasks for mastering a foreign language, of how they correlate with the learning process and student’s personal problems);

cognitive design (a set of knowledge necessary to solve the problems of forecasting, planning, organizing and implementing educational activities and specific tasks of teaching a foreign language);

communicative and constructive component (compositional transformation of hypertext information while mastering both linguistic and methodological information; establishing contacts and relationships in the network);

reflective organizational component (the student’s ability to integrate all components of the hypertext competence in educational and professional activities, objectively evaluating their results);

personal valeological component (personal interest in improving modern techniques, methods, and strategies of teaching a foreign language);

creative component (possession of information searching, communicative and educational-methodical skills in educational activities for creative development).

Hypertext Sub-competencies

In the formation of hypertext competence, we distinguish the following sub-competencies: social, strategic, educational and cognitive.

The formation of social sub-competence implies students’ acquisition of certain knowledge, skills and personal abilities. This competence should include such skills as: initiating online communication with foreign students; requesting written hypertext information online; understanding and evaluating the statements of the communication partner; making a personal statement (request for next information, response to the statement of the partner, etc.).

Strategic subcompetence includes certain knowledge, abilities and skills: to work with hypertexts in a foreign language in compliance with specific techniques in order to determine the topic and understand the content of the given text; to predict the communicative intentions of communication partners in blogs, forums, chat rooms based on hypertexts, etc.

Educational cognitive sub-competence contains the following knowledge, abilities and skills:

to work with multilingual hypertext materials in the network (select the desired textual information material);

to explore hypertext, understand its structure; determine which elements make up the construction of hypertext and in what kind of interaction they are; indicate hypertext size; understand what one text does inside another one, understand what actions are needed in order to receive and create your own hypertext;

to determine the linguistic value of the information received in a foreign language (according to the topics developed by students); carry out self-monitoring and self-analysis of educational activities in the network; connect to virtual lectures and virtual seminars of European universities on relevant foreign social programs, if necessary, with subsequent consultations), etc.;

to develop linguistic activity as an activity related to the perception, analysis, compilation of texts with linguistic content, i.e. creating your own product in the target language;

to develop noise immunity, i.e. the ability to perform all actions with hypertext in conditions of conscious control. The indicator of such a skill will be the quick execution of all actions with hypertext in the network and the ability to combinie this activity with the execution of other actions, for example, simultaneously maintaining network communication.

The formation of hypertext communication is based on the principles of:

environment-oriented knowledge based on real practical work and personal experience of the student;

comprehensive learning content based on the authenticity of materials and the authenticity of interaction tasks;

the interaction between learning and real-life activities in the dialogue of different cultures;

autonomy of learning in an ever-changing information communication hypertext environment;

cooperative learning based on the priorities of linguistic and cultural components.

Hypertext competence methodology

The methodology for the formation of hypertext competence includes targeted, organizational and technical, and control and evaluation components.

The target orientation of the technique of forming hypertext competence is determined by the methods and approaches to learning in the hypertext network.

The organizational and technical component of the formation of hypertext competence includes the following stages: familiarization and pre-speech training (search, analysis, processing of hypertexts, skills in working with hypertexts as a means of obtaining, processing and managing information); comparative tasks (compilation and testing of multilevel network dialogs), language practice in the network (network discourses, e-mail communication, chat rooms, blogs, role-playing games as types of communication).

The control and evaluation direction of the methodology for the formation of hypertext competence is manifested in means that, on the one hand, would ensure the formation of students’ actions in the hypertext network, on the other hand, would give the teacher an opportunity to receive information about every stage of formation and, based on this, exercise control. One of such tools are work sheets for independent work with the specially developed types of tasks. The student should divide all the work in the network into separate operations with hypertext and should clearly understand every operation. The tasks are structured so that the student cannot fail to perform the necessary operations with hypertexts in the network. The student has to reason logically and do a lot of thinking; any mistake can be corrected at any stage of the assignment, and where it was committed. Such work creates the conditions for self-monitoring, self-testing, mutual verification using the assistance of native speakers in the network.

Since we are talking about changing the “educational landscape", the transition to new rules may look this way: updating skills on the new material; correlating previously formed skills, in relation to new learning conditions; acquiring completely new skills. “The problem of skills is connected almost exclusively with the formation, not with the functioning of the activity” (Leontev, 2005: 49).

Conclusion

Thus, we can say that the formation of hypertext competence emerges from a combination of methods, tools and technologies that provide communication between hypertext network devices with the aim of transmitting information. The transmitted information may be diverse in type and content and is intended to be used collectively through network information and communication resources, where the network language and culture differ from the traditional speech practices. The difference here lies at the macro level, i.e. at the level of texts, and at the micro level, the level of lexeme transformation, at the level of meaning and form, different from the norms existing in the language system of the community.

At the same time, the level of assimilation of facts and, therefore, their memorization increases when the information is structured, taking into account features of students, and where an important role is played by:

objectivity (the visual images of provided information are correlated with a specific object);

integrity, which is based on a generalization of knowledge in the hypertext network and on direct communication with native speakers of the language being studied;

network identity as a form of interaction in the network, as self-identification in chats based on hypertexts, where there is a “sphere”, “communicative accessibility”.

The formation of hypertext competence is carried out in the course of environment-oriented learning, when the mastery of a foreign language is achieved by using the language in natural situations and conditions.