FEATURES OF IMPROVING CADETS’ ORAL COMMUNICATION SKILLS IN MULTILINGUAL ENVIRONMENTS
Keywords:
multilingual military environment, oral communicative competence, military lingua franca, code-switching, mediation, intercomprehension, multinational exercises, Partnership for Peace, strategic competence, sociolinguistic competenceAbstract
The article analyses the specific challenges and opportunities that arise when military cadets study and operate in genuinely multilingual and multinational environments such as joint exercises, peacekeeping missions, NATO Partnership for Peace programmes and multinational staff colleges. Traditional monolingual-oriented approaches prove inadequate in such contexts, and a comprehensive multilingual-communicative competence model specifically designed for future officers is therefore proposed. This model integrates task-based multilingual interaction, deliberate practice of code-switching and mediation skills, systematic development of intercomprehension strategies, and the use of English as a military lingua franca while preserving operational efficiency in Russian and national languages. Empirical data from the multinational exercises “Steppe Eagle” and “Regional Cooperation” confirm the high effectiveness of the proposed methodology.
