PREPARING JOURNALISM STUDENTS FOR PROFESSIONAL DISCOURSE IN THE SPHERE OF MASS COMMUNICATION

The paper is devoted to the discussion of issues and trends of modern journalism education from the point of contents and approaches to teaching and learning journalism students' professional discourse in the sphere of mass communication. Special attention is paid to the composition and structure of the curriculum and innovative methods of teaching Master's degree journalism students. The goal of the article is to determine the issues of teaching professional discourse for Master's degree journalism students both in the framework of Federal state educational standards (FGOS) adopted in the sphere of higher education in Russia and in the context of the intensive implementation of modern communicative and information technologies in the process of teaching. The authors review different definitions of the term 'professional discourse' and present their own interpretation of this term. For the exploration of professional discourse in media sphere, the authors apply the three-level model adopted in the scientific literature. At the intraprofessional level the importance of knowledge and unambiguous understanding of the terminology and journalism ethics are taking into consideration. There is the fact that there are differences, sometimes significant, in the Russian-speaking and English-speaking scientific and professional media communities (mass communication). At the interprofessional level the questions of learning and teaching of professional discourse in the sphere of mass media are discussed. Understanding professional discourse as verbal and nonverbal communication aimed to solve theoretical and practical problems, the authors discuss the necessity of mastering by students both theoretical knowledge and practical training and experience in the sphere of mass communication. At the professional-lay level the importance of getting feedback in media communication is discussed. All mentioned above is impossible to achieve without applying new modern methods and ways of teaching. The rapid emergence of digital technologies has caused new approaches to teaching and learning in higher education. One of them is blended learning, (or hybrid learning), an educational concept combining traditional face-to-face (onsite) learning with technology-mediated learning, or online methods. In the framework of blended learning environment, the journalism students get knowledge both internally, communicating live with their group mates and teachers, and independently, using modern information technology. Recognizing the advantages of blended learning systems, the authors conducted a survey among students, asking them to answer the question which methods of teaching and learning they prefer: face-to-face, online or blended. The results will be presented in the paper. The authors conclude that preparing master's degree journalism students for professional discourse in mass communication demands not only teaching professional skills but also a number of cultural, socio-linguistic and communicative and information competences. Blended learning allows educators to be flexible, integrating high quality of traditional teaching with new modern technologies and increasing the effectiveness of classes.