Abstract:

The article substantiates the necessity of building up and reveals the opportunities of developing the socio-cultural competence of students of non-language departments with the use of information technology on the basis of enhanced culture-through-language studies component within the content of foreign language teaching of future professionals. In recent years, interest in studying foreign languages in connection with socio-economic changes has significantly increased in Russia. All subjects of the educational system strive to meet the needs of self-realization of a person in a new socio-cultural environment; a dialogue of cultures of Western and Eastern countries is clearly traced. This fact leads to significant changes in the educational system as a whole, since training of a responsible and competent future professional begins to take a priority place in the field of educational services. But at the present time there is a discrepancy between modern requirements to a professional and the content of the training. The need to increase the professional qualifications of specialists is determined by the expansion of the scope of their intercultural interaction, the growth of global problems, and development of the economy as a whole. Training of future professionals who are able and willing to participate in intercultural communication is most effectively carried out in the process of forming and developing their socio-cultural competence, with strengthening the language-through-culture component in the educational content.

The term “culture-through-language study” is included in the definition of teaching foreign language content. When studying foreign languages, it is necessary to include information about social experience of people whose language is being studied. In the work the Internet technology "Web Quest" was used, created in 1995 by American professor B. Dodge, which is a web scenario of the project assignment and includes less complicated components such as "Hot list" and "Multimedia scrapbook" (lists of certain information, multimedia and Internet sources on the topic). If we want to prepare students for real intercultural communication, it is necessary to use information of authentic content in teaching. A culture-through-language study is a part of the area investigating the relationship between language and culture, and is directly referred to intercultural communication.

Keywords:

Learning, education, university, student, socio-cultural competence, foreign language training, culture-through-language studies, information technology.