Abstract:

Due to the expanding interstate relations in various fields of human activity, the processes of globalization in the field of economics, ecology and education, the role of learning a foreign language as a means of intercultural interaction is increasing. For effective communication at the professional and everyday levels, specialists of any profile need to possess not only linguistic knowledge, but also be competent in the field of intercultural communication from the perspective of the dialogue of cultures. In this regard, the problem of the formation of socio-cultural competence of students is one of the most urgent for the system of language education.

When developing the author's system for the formation of students’ socio-cultural competence, we relied on the following methodological approaches: systematic, activity-based and competence-based. Using the first approach allowed us to create an integral system for the formation of the above-mentioned competence, to determine its component composition, and the mechanisms of interaction of all components. The activity approach ensured the system’s containing specific ways and methods of implementing the above-mentioned process, which did not only contributed to the formation of students’ knowledge paradigm, but also to the acquisition of specific behavioral patterns based on the socio-cultural realities of the country of the language being studied. The competence approach provided understanding the development of socio-cultural competence as an integrative process that includes not only knowledge and skills, but also students’ personal qualities.

In the course of the research several conditions for the system manifestation have been tested but the evidence proved that the crucial factor of the effectiveness of the process of forming students’ socio-cultural competence is the use of authentic materials in the process of teaching a foreign language, which affect the success of the process by imitating the immersion of future specialists in a natural foreign language speech environment. In addition, the use of authentic materials is characterized by a high degree of their functionality, which means orientation to their actual use; students have a feeling of familiarizing with the language environment. Authentic materials are the optimal means of teaching, reflecting the features of the language being studied and the cultural code of its native speakers, which contributes to a deeper penetration of students into the world of a foreign language culture.

The approbation of the system of students’ socio-cultural competence formation developed by the authors proved that the use of authentic materials in the process of teaching a foreign language is the dominant factor for the implementation of the process under study. The use of such research methods as questionnaires, surveys, testing, self-assessment, ranking allowed us to verify the effectiveness of the developed system for the formation of the competence under study, the level of which was determined according to the following criteria: cognitive-linguistic, operational-behavioral, personal.

Keywords:

Socio-cultural competence, systematic approach, activity-based approach, competence-based approach, authentic materials.