Excursion quest as a tool for developing socio-cultural competence of foreign students

Abstract

The article is devoted to revealing the features of quest technology in the educational process, conducting a “live” excursion quest for the development of sociocultural competence of foreign students.The relevance of the study lies in the need to study the features of creating and conducting excursion quests in the preparation of foreign students.The purpose of the study is to consider the features of conducting a “live” excursion quest in a foreign audience, to analyze the effectiveness of integrating such a quest into the educational process as a tool for developing sociocultural competence at the pre-university stage. In accordance with the stated purpose of the study, the following tasks are identified: developing a “live” quest as part of a museum excursion; conducting a test to determine the degree of effectiveness of integrating the quest into the educational process.The development and testing of the quest was carried out on the basis of Southwest State University as part of teaching Russian as a foreign language at the pre-university stage.During the research process, theoretical, empirical, pedagogical methods were used, such as analysis and synthesis of scientific literature, descriptive method when disclosing the content of the developed excursion quest, and a statistical method when determining the level of formation of students’ socio-cultural knowledge.The research material was a developed excursion quest designed to work with foreign citizens as part of a visit to the city’s local history museum at the stage of pre-university preparation.An excursion quest is a promising technology for achieving educational goals when teaching foreign citizens. Quest technology updates the language knowledge, communication skills and abilities of students, while stimulating their cognitive activity and developing such important personality qualities as intelligence, attentiveness, and independence. Sociocultural competence is an integral part of foreign language communicative competence, and a “live” excursion quest, used within the framework of linguoeducation in a foreign audience, is capable, with careful preparation, of effectively introducing foreign speakers to the culture of the country in the context of real urban space, expanding their knowledge of culturally oriented vocabulary, and emphasizing the importance of sociocultural observation.