Creative thinking and foreign language education as the two main humanitarian components of contemporary higher education

Financial University under the Government of Russian Federation, Department of English Language for Professional Communication, Moscow, Russia

^* Corresponding author: lvmilyaeva@fa.ru

Abstract

This article presents a brief theoretical overview of the issues of humanities education and its two components, namely, creative thinking and foreign language education. Within the framework of the present article, the author considers the definitions of the main terms, as well as foreign and domestic approaches to an aspect of contemporary education, such as humanitarian knowledge. The author also attempts to prove that, despite the pressure of information and communication technologies, the humanitarian aspect has not lost its importance in the training of modern specialists. Discussing the place of humanities education in the contemporary academic space, the author analyzes the current concepts of foreign and domestic scientists. Special attention in the theoretical review is paid to two main components of humanitarian knowledge, namely, creative thinking, and foreign language education. Creative thinking is presented as a special development component of the contemporary personality, who is formed through special creative tasks and is based on the processes of cognition and transformation of the acquired knowledge. Education received in a foreign language allows forming progressive competencies, such as socio-cultural competency and communicative competency in a foreign language.