PECULIARITIES OF LANGUAGE TRAINING OF TEACHERS IN THE EUROPEAN SPACE OF EDUCATION

The growth of international exchanges and the presence in societies of an increasing number of people belonging to different cultures and speakers of different languages causes the growth of the role of language education and calls for the formation of a new image of a teacher in a multilingual and multicultural Europe. This image assumes that the language teacher becomes a leader of change, constantly innovating and aware of the evolution of his student body and his environment. The main vocation of a language teacher is educating European citizens in the spirit of tolerance, understanding and respect for diversity, which in turn requires appropriate training in order to be able to fulfill this role of mediator between languages and cultures. It was revealed that the leading trends in teacher language training are: combining philological education with other specialties, internship or study during the semester of students in the country whose language is being studied, increasing opportunities for pedagogical practice, students’ independent work, and the introduction of information and communication technologies into the educational process. It was revealed that the goal of the language training of a teacher in the European educational space at the current stage is a professionally motivated teacher, teacher-assistant, mediator between cultures who is capable of intercultural learning, autonomous improvement of the level of professional competence and dialogue. It has been established that the understanding of language strategies, features and trends of language education and language teacher training in European countries is one of the leading tasks facing researchers and managers of the national education system. The research methodology is based on an interdisciplinary approach that combines philosophical and educational analysis, comparative research and a socio-cultural approach. The methods of content analysis of scientific publications that highlight the issues of language training of teachers in European countries were used, as well as methods of qualitative analysis of programs and teaching practices in higher educational institutions that train foreign language teachers. The principles of structural and functional analysis were applied to determine the key competencies necessary for a modern teacher in a multilingual environment. The basis of the research is also the analysis of regulatory legal acts of the European Union that regulate the requirements for language education and teacher training, which allows us to outline general trends and prospects for the development of this area.