Developing Students Socio-Cultural Competence By Reading English Fictional Literature

Abstract

In the present study author examines the problem of development of University student’s socio-cultural competence. Learning foreign culture, value perception of the modern world, understanding the importance of the human personality and the place it takes in the cultural process are getting more and more urgent in the context of a new culturological model presuming the realization of human cultural perfection mechanisms. Sociocultural competences are becoming increasingly important and significant in terms of employability, career, competitive abilities. Acquired and developed throughout one’s lifetime, sociocultural competences create favourable conditions for successful survival and functioning in contemporary labour market. Effective teaching of methods of socialization is impossible without making an effort to conceptualize the key elements of culture in younger people’s consciousness: principles of choice of values, basics of creativity, language, ethnos, art. The paper aims at highlighting the importance of such disciplines in Learning History of Literature, Writing and Home Reading, which should be integrated into the course of Foreign Languages Speech Practice in order to develop students’ socio-cultural competence. The emphasis is put on the significance of fiction studies in preparing professionals having not only good linguistic skills but also realizing a wide range of cultural peculiarities of foreign countries. On the example of fictions by E.Hemingway, Ch.Dickens, S.Mougham, S. Fitzgerald, O.Henry, the approach to using historical facts in developing socio-cultural competence is revealed being supplemented with a number of pre-reading and post-reading activities suggested to students learning Englash as a second foreign language.