Abstract:

In connection with the optimization processes in universities and a significant reduction in hours for a foreign language, it is necessary to revise the most familiar approaches in the educational process. The implementation of Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) technology involves the imitation of typical tasks of activities from everyday life. If we consider the Theory of Expansive Learning as the basis for a task-oriented approach to learning, intercultural communicative competence becomes clearly a key element when students try to comprehend a new language in a new cultural context, since cultures determine the ways of structuring the language and the ways of using it. According to I. Engestrom, the author of the concept of expansive (extended) learning, its essence is to involve a certain group of people in collective activity when they take actions to transform the system of activity through the reconceptualization of the object and motive of activity, covering a radically wider horizon of possibilities than in the previous method of activities. Most often, it is with his name (and not with the name of A.N. Leontiev) that the theory of activity is associated.

The definition of Task-Based Learning and Teaching approach in the context of expansive learning theory clearly shows the importance of cultural knowledge, personal experience, and the previously learned information for task design, gradual learning from simple to complex, and the development of students' intercultural communicative competence. Learners use their cultural knowledge and life experiences as a resource for learning. This personal knowledge is modified by interaction during the course of learning foreign languages.

Emerging from activity theory, expansive learning theory recognizes that students mediate learning through their cultural and historical knowledge, that is, personal experience and past knowledge are resources that learners use to interpret new information. As it can be seen from our study, students mediated learning through their cultural and historical knowledge, which was modified by interaction during a language learning course based on activity design. The interaction between the subjects of learning was carried out through the context of the activity, according to its specific culture and history, which contributes to the development of intercultural communicative competence of students.

When implementing TBLT technology, language skills are integrated in all four aspects: speaking, writing, reading and listening; there is a desire for natural communication in the target language with the use of a creative approach in solving the tasks. The study of topics of intercultural content contributes to the formation of intercultural communicative competence in foreign language classes, and the use of a task-oriented approach, when students need to perform a series of actions to achieve a result in order to reveal the topic and demonstrate it in various elements of activity, strengthens and consolidates the process of forming the intercultural communicative competence.

Keywords:

Student, university, task-based learning, intercultural communicative competence, expansive learning.