The Formation of Students’ National Self-Awareness in EFL Class

Abstract

In the epoch of globalization it is urgently important to draw attention to the problem of the formation of national self-awareness of school students. Numerous researches in the Russian Federation show that there is a tendency of cultural level decreasing, according to which a great many school students are not aware not only of the world's cultural heritage, but have a vague idea of their own (national) culture. The authors examine the role of foreign languages learning in the formation of national self-awareness of students in High schools. Language, as it is, reflects the culture and history of the nation. Therefore it can be declared a unique source in the process of national self-awareness formation of school students. The cross-cultural approach and the cross-cultural comparative approach in teaching EFL let both, teachers and students, consider human problems from the standpoint of two or more cultures that contribute to the comparative-contrastive analysis of native culture phenomena and compare the native culture with the culture of the target language. Drawing on literature of teaching and learning EFL, multicultural studies, as well as personal international teaching and learning experience, the authors examine the teaching and learning techniques focused on these approaches and present the authentic model of the formation of students’ national self-awareness based on the integration of teaching the language and local lore in EFL classes. The paper discusses issues and practices of the studied model and offers general recommendations for High schools faculty.