Foreign language reading comprehension skills formation among university students of non-linguistic study fields

Introduction. The age of digital technologies provides students with ample opportunities to search for and obtain professionally significant information. In this regard, the formation of strong foreign language reading comprehension skills is an important criterion for the successful professional activity of university graduates. In the context of digitalization of the educational environment within the framework of the competence-based approach, teaching reading foreign language texts involves the use of digital resources, which have a wide educational functionality. In this regard, the purpose of the study is to identify what impact the use of digital resources has on the formation of foreign language reading comprehension skills among students. Materials and methods. The study involved 92 second-year undergraduate students of Vyatka State University, studying in the majors of “Biotechnology” and “Chemical Technology”. Foreign language reading comprehension skills formation involves training in the digital environment of the MS Teams and Moodle platforms, where pre-text, text and post-text stages of training are implemented, including the use of the developed system of exercises. For statistical processing of the results Pearson's chi-square test was used. KEYWORDS Results. Foreign language reading comprehension skills formation using digital resources went through pre text, text and post-text stages. For each of these stages, reading exercise system was developed to master certain reading strategies for extracting information from the texts. The results of the experiment showed that the number of students in the experimental group with a low level of foreign language reading comprehension skills decreased from 45.7% to 13.0%, with an average level decreased from 36.9% to 32.6%, with a high level increased from 17.4% to 54.4% (χ2= 11.286, p ≤ 0.05). Conclusion. The significance of the conducted research lies in the approach used to solve the problem of developing foreign language reading comprehension skills, which involves training in the digital space of the MS Teams and Moodle platforms. The integration of digital technologies in teaching students to read foreign language texts allows to increase the capabilities of traditional forms of training, autonomy and students’ motivation to read foreign language texts for professional purposes, and compensates for the lack of a language environment