HIGH SCHOOLERS’ SOCIO-CULTURAL COMPETENCE FORMATION IN THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDY PROCESS

Abstract

Objective. The objective of the article is to analyze the problems of high schoolers’ socio-cultural competence formation in the foreign language study process. Methods. The main scientific results are obtained by applying a set of general scientific and special methods of research, namely: analysis, generalization and systematization of scientific and educational-methodical literature on pedagogy, psychology, linguistics, methods of foreign languages teaching; theoretical generalization, analysis and synthesis, as well as comparative, descriptive and analytical. Results. Theoretical analysis of the content and models of the communicative competence formation allows to allocate the socio-cultural competence of students in a separate component of communicative competence and to consider it as a coherent system, which includes the cross-cultural competence, linguistic and regional competence, socio-linguistic competence, interconnected and mutually conditioned by the aim and tasks of real-life communication with native speakers. Determining the content and role of all components of socio-cultural competence in the foreign language teaching system on the basis of communicative and activity approach motivated its structure: socio-cultural competence is an integrative formation, which includes: cross-cultural, socio-linguistic knowledge, skills and abilities to correlate language means with the aim and conditions of communication; ability to organize communication in accordance with the social norms of behavior adopted by native speakers; the ability to use linguistic means in accordance with nationally agreed peculiarities of their use.