DEVELOPING SOCIAL AND CULTURAL AWARENESS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING

Nowadays we are witnessing global changes in the political life as well as in the economy. These changes have one more time underlined the utter importance of foreign language teaching (here and further - FLT) for the development of an all-round personality. V.A. Grebennikova has very rightly put it that “foreign languages and foreign language teaching channel humanitarian knowledge and, broader, humanity; FLT acts as a kind of filter against both Western and Eastern mass-culture, leaving what matches the target culture intact, thus underlining and emphasizing its merits”. This important aspect added a new dimension to FLT in modern Russia, making foreign languages not just an ordinary subject but a tool for efficient cross-cultural and international communication (V.V. Safonova).The sociocultural approach which now dominates the educational environment has among its strategic values the formation of cultural awareness, i.e. the idea worldview specific to the speaker of the foreign language. So FLT cannot be any longer be limited to teaching language structures and the rules of their usage.The essence of sociocultural approach is in teaching foreign languages as a means of cross-cultural communication and a way to understand foreign cultures and subcultures. “Sociocultural approach makes it possible to make the learner aware of the world history, the learner’s own country and nation, and to make him understand that all the people in the world are interconnected, and only their joint effort can make the solution of global problems possible...” (V.V. Safonova).The efficiency of sociocultural education via FLT can only be guaranteed when the dialogue between cultures and civilizations is balanced.

foreign language education, teaching, foreign languages, sociocultural approach, culture, civilization, cross-cultural communication