Abstract:

A language as an essential part of culture in the European multicultural educational space is subject to unconditional value-semantic convergence. The concept of language learning has been replaced by the term intercultural communication, which means the formation of students' utilitarian, technological, instrumental competencies associated with the comprehension of another culture, in the center of which is language.

A language, being a unique and universal building material, helps a person to explain and describe the world, and also forms models of their perception. Of course, the world is much richer than the possibilities of a language, but it was the human ability to symbolize that pulled people out of the animal world. A symbol as a conventional sign replaces an object, making a person's intellectual capabilities almost unlimited. We should agree with the German philosopher and culturologist E.Cassirer, who called the man "an animal that creates symbols." Indeed, there is a single world and it is the "world of culture". Intercultural Network data convince us that the reason of unsuccessful adaptation of employees in the international labor market is intercultural lacunae, which act as an obstacle to establishing business contacts with foreign partners. At the same time, about 50% of international companies break up for the same reason. Behind these statistics are not only cultural issues. Companies are experiencing serious financial losses. Scientists also take into account the polar division of cultures into Eastern and Western, and they are least of all concerned with the actual geographical location of the countries.

Intercultural ignorance is the result of a misunderstanding of two opposing worldview, religious and philosophical paradigms. Carl Gustav Jung, studying the worldview of the East and West, came to the conclusion that these two cultural centers can be viewed in terms of extroversion and introversion.

There are numerous linguistic evidences that we see the world through the prism of people: the blizzard is angry, the years are running, etc. The search for a model of culture that could be taken as an analogue of the real world, which has absorbed everything that is nationally significant for determining the mentality of a particular people, can be crowned with success if scientists rely on the understanding of culture as a way of life assimilated by the people. The model of intercultural education, thus, will act as a representative and repeater of a particular culture. Let us conclude that teaching a foreign language should involve not only constant speech interaction of a student with a culture alien to him, it is, in fact, intercultural in nature.

Let us single out the main levels of intercultural competence, the mastering of which will help to remove the problem of worldview convergence in a multilingual educational space: cognitive (a general idea of ​​norms and behavior in contact cultures); affective (the ability and willingness to take the position of a partner in international cooperation to prevent a possible conflict caused by the values ​​of another culture); communicative-behavioral (possession of the skills to competently build their speech behavior in an intercultural situation).

The article will thoroughly analyze the main postulates of intercultural education aimed at the formation of mental convergence between the carriers of different cultures, whom we consider intercultural personalities.

Keywords:

Multilingual education, symbolization of the world, mental convergence, levels of intercultural competence.