Abstract:

The approach to socio-cultural education has been changing constantly in the 21st century education. The necessity to know, to understand cultural heritage of the country, its identity, traditions, customs, values of the language you study, is becoming increasingly vital in this changing world. To make communication effective, the emphasis shouldn’t be placed merely on the study of the language itself, its aspects and characteristics; but to take into consideration socio-cultural aspects and contexts, which, of course, vary from one culture to another.

Culture and language are closely interconnected and no language can be learnt without prior understanding and knowing socially and linguistically collected practical skills, cultural ideas and backgrounds. The communicators, who were raised and brought up in a different culture, should properly apply knowledge mentioned above to use the language more easily and to fully comprehend foreign speeches and texts. Studying the language, we should also focus on peculiarities of human behavior, local etiquette, thus interpreting culture through competences.

While developing socio-cultural competence, we should touch upon its different issues and points: social, contextual, stylistic, non-verbal communicative aspects. The content of education provides special environment for student personal cultural development. Teaching aimed at mastering cultural awareness within the framework of language education, is not just knowledge in grammar, lexis, development of communication skills, but the ability to apply it in multilingual and multinational societies in appropriate cultural ways. Current cultural educational development should lay foundations for creating social inclusions, studying traditions, mastering cultural values, bringing up tolerance and understanding in multicultural world.

The idea of developing socio-cultural competence via project-based learning is not fairly new. Project-based learning (PBL) proves to be one of the most efficient technologies to promote language diversity, develop cultural awareness, and acquire professional skills.

The benefits of PBL are fairly obvious. Students have improved attitudes and increased motivation for learning, greater degree of responsibility for their own education compared to more traditional classroom activities; opportunities to develop complex skills, such as higher-order thinking, problem-solving, collaborating, and communicating, comprehension of culturally diverse patterns of behavior and decision-making.

Special attention is paid to Internet-based project aimed at developing students’ willingness to be involved into research innovative activity within the format of national research university with many foreign students enrolled. The article describes the educational project that was undertaken by the authors at the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences at South Ural State University.

Keywords:

Socio-cultural education, multilingual and multinational societies, culture through competence approach, project-based learning.