Abstract:

Research questions:
The article discusses the potential of linguistic and cultural studies approach to the learning of English phonetics by EFL speakers with the help of new audio-video technologies, language laboratory in particular. A concrete scheme for teaching pronunciation and prosodic features on the basis of socio-cultural conditions of language functioning is reviewed in considerable detail.

Method:
This article contains a brief analysis of the results of a survey which was conducted with the first year students of Linguistics at the Kazan Federal University in 2014. The questionnaire consisted of three groups of questions of which the first was concerned with the students' background, the second contains questions on motivation and attitudes toward English-speaking people and culture, and the third were about the new audio-video techniques and the language laboratory. Material involved two original documentaries on cross-cultural topics and audio tracks to them.

Results:
The results of the research suggest that linguistic and cultural studies approach with the help of new technologies enriches the knowledge of the target language country specific information; shows the actual functioning of linguistic resources in authentic documentaries and regional studies' texts; makes it possible not only to provide students with visual data in addition to audio data, but also to strengthen communicative valuable lexical and phonetic material, and give them feedback on their L2 production. It improves pronunciation skills by training audio samples of English proper names, words denoting objects of national culture, basic intonation models. It gives opportunity of studying paralinguistic characteristics of the speaker and other participants of the video fragment such as behavior, manners, gestures, facial expression.

Conclusions:
Linguistic and cultural studies approach contributes to the enrichment of the substantive plan of the course of English phonetics, it serves a great stimulus for mastering pronunciation skills and together with the widespread use of audio-video techniques it allows teachers to introduce all of prosodic and paralinguistic features of speech technology into the process of learning.

Keywords:

Linguistic and cultural studies approach, English phonetics, pronunciation and prosodic features, EFL speakers, audio-video technologies, language laboratory.