Abstract:

Language and Culture Studies, a branch of linguistics combining ethnolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, sociology, history and cultural studies, is an integral part of linguistic education. It introduces students to non-equivalent vocabulary, non-verbal means of communication, native speakers’ background knowledge, aphoristics, phraseological units as a reflection of culture and psychological characteristics of a nation.

The paper describes the process of a web-quest design for studying Language and Culture of Australia by linguistic students. The linguistic part of the study was aimed at selection of internet-based subject-related materials (texts, audio, video, online dictionaries) about Australian geography, climate, flora and fauna, ethnic population, Australian English vocabulary. The technological part included creation of an interactive map of Australia on the basis of GoogleMaps, which connected GPS-coordinates of the map with the selected sociocultural and linguistic data by means of geotagging. The creative part of the study included development of three web-quest scenarios, which contained linguistic and linguocultural research tasks followed by the instructions. The scenarios were distributed among BMSTU linguistic students (n=61), who fulfilled the tasks in mini-groups. The study results showed that the proposed technology of a web-quest design is an effective tool boosting linguistic students’ interest in the subject and developing their cognitive and communicative skills.

Keywords:

Language and Culture Studies, Australia, web-quest.