INTERNET COMMENTS AS MEANS OF DEVELOPING SOCIAL AND CULTURAL COMPETENCE OF STUDENTS IN LINGUISTICS MAJOR

The cross-cultural pragmatics in teaching foreign languages (M.Z. Booth, Q. Li, C. Nieto, K. Piatkowska) has been under study in recent years. Modern education system aims at educating a linguistic persona who is good at cross-cultural communication. The social and cultural competence of learners is a crucial part of cross-cultural communication. The level of the social and cultural competence of the students illustrates the level of their general language skills that enable them to communicate in a foreign language and build an intercultural dialogue in professional environment. The Internet communication, particularly online comments serve as one of the most popular aids to develop a social and cultural competence.

The present paper sought to work out the pedagogies of working with foreign-language comments. The researchers carried out an experiment, based on a material of the French language. The authors concluded that the background knowledge is of great importance to understand international national, cultural and, often, historical phenomena used in comments. Furthermore, the writers concluded that the social and cultural context plays a crucial role in the interpretation of foreign online comments. Having analyzed online comments the authors defined the types of communicative behavior, which are a part of the national community behavior.

The findings of the authors will allow teachers to develop and implement sustainable and well-planned methodologies and approaches to develop foreign language speaking skills of university students. These methodologies and approaches encourage students to use communicative strategies of foreign language verbal behavior in the process of intercultural communication training. The study also proves that the teacher is responsible for ensuring the successful interpretation of an authentic text by students.