BUILDING CULTURALLY COMPETENT STUDENTS IN TEACHING SPANISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

This article focuses on the ways of building culturally competent students in teaching Spanish as a foreign language. Firstly, the authors give definition to cultural competence and single out the features that need to be present in a culturally competent foreign language student. Secondly, some consideration is made on the theory of the question taking into account the challenges and problems that can appear in developing this competence. Thirdly, the authors show how to build cultural competence in students of Spanish, namely, how to incorporate cultural information into the Spanish language classroom, as well as how to increase the cultural awareness of students and form right attitudes in them. It is emphasized that the effective communication is not just the matter of language proficiency usage, but also of cultural background knowledge and of culturally competent communication practices. Through vocabulary and grammar teaching, students of Spanish attain cultural information, attitudes, consciousness and skills, which, undoubtedly, leads to forming more competent professionals. In conclusion, authors underline the necessity of enriching communicative and cultural competence in order to prepare broad-minded, perspicacious, accurate and tolerant students.