The Facilitative Aspect of Developing Students' Strategic Competence in Oral Professional Communication Within Distance Foreign Language Learn Ing

The article provides a theoretical and methodological substantiation of the concept of digital facilitation as a key factor in developing students’ strategic competence in oral professional communication within the studentcentered paradigm of distance education. The study demonstrates that in the context of total digitalization, the classical model of strategic competence evolves into the concept of digital communicative flexibility. This construct integrates the speaker's ability to overcome the "screen barrier," adapt to the technical discreteness of the media channel, and flexibly leverage the multimodal tools of virtual platforms to preserve an authentic authorial voice. To achieve the research objectives, a complex of theoretical methods was employed: comparative, systemic, definitional, and terminological analysis, alongside pedagogical modeling. As a result of the study, the linguodidactic substance of the concept of "digital facilitation" has been revealed, and three key vectors of its implementation have been determined (psychological de-escalation, interactive decentralization, and cognitive scaffolding), which ensure the minimization of students' foreign language anxiety and the lowering of the affective filter. The author’s theoretical and conceptual model has been scientifically substantiated, finding its practical reflection in a prospective complex of strategies (The Virtual Pitch, AI-Opponent Simulations, Micro-VIVA). These innovative formats allow shifting the focus of assessment from evaluating the final speech product, which can be compromised in the era of generative artificial intelligence, to evaluating the live process of spontaneous thinking in a foreign language, thereby ensuring the protection of academic integrity and the restoration of the student's agency. Finally, the prospects for the further transformation of the developed model into the practical domain of higher education through the creation of applied guidelines and digital case studies have been outlined.