THE FORMATION OF STUDENTS’ HUMANITARIAN CULTURE WITHIN THE CROSS-CULTURAL APPROACH IN PROFESSIONALLY-ORIENTED FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING

Abstract

The paper deals with the formation of humanitarian culture among the students of non-linguistic universities within the process of their professional development. The research reveals the correlation between the development of a person’s humanitarian culture and the learning foreign languages process related to the cultural socio-dynamics and cross-cultural approach. Special attention is paid to the identification of effective specific features, such as pedagogical conditions and methods necessary to implement humanitarization in foreign language classes. The authors point out qualitative characteristics of humanitarian culture components, the criteria and levels of its development. Both curriculum and methodology have been worked out to diagnose development levels of the humanitarian culture among the students as they allow verifying the effectiveness of the curriculum implementation. The introduction of a cross-cultural approach to the language training process among the students of non-linguistic universities encourages them to look for the common and the different in traditions, lifestyle, views and values both of their native culture and the culture of the language being studied. Students learn to understand and accept what is different from their worldview, to analyze all spheres of life including a professional one from an axiological point of view. The pedagogical experiment was carried out among the second year students of the Information Technology Department of Polzunov Altai State Technical University. The results of the experiment have shown the effectiveness of the curriculum and that its introduction into the learning process contributes to the improvement of level of humanitarian culture among the students of non-linguistic universities in the process of learning foreign languages.