The formation of the socio-cultural competence of upper secondary school students in the process of foreign language learning

Abstract

Second language teaching methods are now focused on personal development. They are designed to prepare students for fluent communication in the target culture. To achieve this goal, it is not enough for a teacher to present only language material, so one of his main tasks is to teach students the most important behavioural and communicative norms of the target culture. This article deals with the theoretical basis of the formation of socio-cultural competence of upper secondary school students. The author makes a definitional analysis of the concepts of «competence» and «socio-cultural competence». It has been identified that there are some contradictions between different scholars regarding the interpretation of these terms, as well as the determination of the structural components of socio-cultural competence. In our opinion, the concept of sociocultural competence appears at the intersection of country studies, linguistic and socio-linguistic competences. The socio-cultural component is an integral part of learning foreign languages. It has been found that the development of communicative skills of upper secondary school students should be implemented through cultural values of the target language. In the process of working on the research, we have identified the following groups of methods of forming socio-cultural competence: comparative method, drama method, and case study method. These approaches are implemented through the principles of deduction, balance, primacy, visuality, individualization, communicativity, and authenticity. The development of socio-cultural competence is a complex process that includes three stages: linguistic, situational, and integrative. At these stages, the teacher uses special exploratory, gaming, or creative tasks. It has been determined that authentic materials play a key role in the formation of sociocultural competence of upper secondary school students, as they are genuine products of a particular culture. The importance of continuous development of foreign language teachers’ intercultural competence was also substantiated.