Integrating native language and culture into the structure of teaching a foreign language at university: a linguodidactic approach

Modern language education at the university is largely focused on students’ awareness of the target language and culture while native language is rarely spotted in language classrooms. The authors analyze theoretical and methodological fundamentals of the national culture-based approaches to teaching foreign languages specifying the necessity to develop equal status professional intercultural communication. To achieve this goal, it is necessary both to understand cultural characteristics of the interlocutor and to be a conscious member of a national culture. To succeed in professional intercultural communication one should be ready not only to adapt and imitate, but to represent and defend one’s own national interests in a foreign language. The aim of the paper is to investigate the possibilities of presenting national language and culture in a foreign language and to present a system of exercises to integrate this material and methods of basic comparative cultural analysis into foreign language classes at linguistic universities. It is proposed to single out four stages of work: cognitive, axiological, conceptual and behavioral. The presented system of exercises is a synthesis of the European approach to culture-based language education (fostering tolerance and respect for cultural pluralism) and national methodological research (the value of national culture, preservation of cultural identity). By performing such tasks, students will learn to accept the world cultural diversity, adequately communicate elements of their native culture, critically assess and comprehend them by comparing with facts of another culture, as well as predict and prevent possible conflicts and manifestations of ethnocentrism.