INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING

Abstract

PRYSHLYAK Oksana – Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Associate Professor of the Foreign Languages Department, Ternopil Volodymyr Hnatyuk National Pedagogical University, Kryvonosa Str., 2, Ternopil, 46024, UkraineE-mail address: pryshlyak_o@yahoo.com ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3108-502X ResearcherID: http://www.researcherid.com/rid/F-3895-2019 LUPAK Natalia – Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor of the Pedagogy and Methods of Primary and Preschool Education Department, Ternopil Volodymyr Hnatyuk National Pedagogical University, Kryvonosa Str., 2, Ternopil, 46024, Ukraine E-mail address: lupak@elr.tnpu.edu.ua ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7868-8771 ResearcherID: http://www.researcherid.com/rid/I-7018-2018 To cite this article: Pryshlyak, O., & Lupak, N. (2019). Intercultural competence in foreign language teaching. Liudynoznavchi studii. Seriia «Pedahohika» – Human Studies. Series of «Pedagogy», 8/40, 185–200. doi: 10.24919/2413-2039.8/40.164457. Article history Received: January 12, 2019Received in revised form: February 14, 2019 Accepted: February 18, 2019Available online: April 22, 2019Journal homepage: http://lssp.dspu.edu.ua/ p-ISSN 2313-2094e-ISSN 2413-2039 © 2019 The Authors. Human studies. Series of «Pedagogy» published by Drohobych Ivan Franko State Pedagogical University & Open Journal Systems. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).Abstract. The article reveals the understanding of intercultural competence in foreign language teaching. Teaching culture in foreign language teaching has remained an unsolved problem for many years. The relevance of the study is to identify the readiness of the English language teachers to implement intercultural competence at English language lessons. Teachers of a foreign language are the first people who introduce pupils to the linguistic and cultural diversity of the world, open the child’s consciousness to the knowledge of other cultural realities, traditions, behavioral models, values, etc. The realities of the modern world prove the importance of forming pupils’ multicultural consciousness, associated not only with countries of the target language, but also with other cultures whose representatives can communicate in the target language. However, the readiness of foreign language teachers to meet the modern challenges of society, which is related to the development of intercultural competence in pupils, has not been sufficiently highlighted in professional pedagogical education. The authors investigated the level of readiness of foreign language teachers for the development of intercultural competence in pupils. Data were collected from 78 foreign language teachers from four regions (Lviv, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk and Chernivtsi region) by means of a questionnaire. Study presented teachers’ understanding of intercultural competence and culture, attitudes to intercultural competence teaching, applications and actual teaching practices in foreign language classroom. The article reveals the attitude of the English language teachers to implementation of intercultural competence in foreign language teaching classroom. Findings revealed two distinct teacher profiles, i.e., the favourably disposed foreign language teacher, who integrate culture into their classroom practices and the unfavourably disposed foreign language teacher, who did not support this practice.Acknowledgements. Sincere thanks to the pedagogical staff of Ternopil National Volodymyr Hnatyuk Pedagogical University, in the person of Prof. Vira Polishchuk.Funding. The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.