Abstract:

Moscow has been driving the longevity social project for several years that aimed at expanding the opportunities for 55+ citizens to participate in cultural and educational projects acquiring both new skills and deepening existing ones. The implementation of the educational program ‘Foreign language for communication and travel’ shows that the methodological focus on the activation of crystallized intelligence is effective. When determining the content and nature of teaching a foreign language to citizens of the 55+ group, it is necessary to base on the laws of personal development. According to existing stereotypes in society, due to age, people after 55 are not capable of high-quality perception of information and effective learning of foreign languages. The current study revealed that the application of the cross-cultural approach shows high efficiency in comparison with formal and grammatical methods. Consequently, adequate communication skills are formed taking into account both speech impact as the most important means of human communication and adequate ways of expressing it in English and Russian. The following method solves the problem of integrating cultural components into education since a comprehensive language competence is required for full-fledged communication in a foreign language. Thus, timely identification of cross-cultural barriers affecting the adequacy of communication makes it possible to improve language competence more effectively. The awareness of 55+ students of the main sources of communication failures is a powerful motivation for improving communication skills and, in particular, can significantly reduce the language barrier in cross-cultural communication.

Keywords:

Longlife studying, teacher’s feedback, crystallized intelligence, the language barrier, category 55+.