HOW TO DEVELOP DIGITAL COMPETENCE IN PRE-SERVICE FL TEACHERS AT UNIVERSITY LEVEL

The study aims to investigate pre-service teachers' readiness to use digital resources for foreign language teaching; to find out the pre-service teachers' attitudes to the development of their digital competence; to outline the ways of the development of the digital competence. A mixed research design was employed which involved 56 pre-service teachers of Kyiv National Linguistic University in 2019-2020. The quantitative research method was employed to assess the level of digital competence in the pre-service foreign language (FL) teachers using the Fisher Criterion. The qualitative research method allowed analysing and interpreting data of the experimental learning. The results showed that the pre-service FL teachers who were consulted by in-service teachers and used checklists for systematical assessment of their digital skills in progress had higher results than those who were only consulted by inservice teachers. Also, the qualitative method aimed to gain data about the pre-service teachers' attitudes to using digital resources for teaching foreign languages. For that purpose, a closed-ended questionnaire for the pre-service teachers was suggested as a data collection tool. It was determined that the digital competence is a necessary component of the teacher's professional competence which affects the success of the learning process. The digital competence can be developed in two areas: the Digital Resources Managing Area and Methodological Managing of Digital Resources Area. The criteria for critical selection, analysis and assessment of digital resources were singled out.