Authentic materials as a means of developing students' sociocultural competence

As part of teaching a foreign language, the teacher constantly searches for effective ways and means of forming and developing sociocultural competence outside the language environment. One of the main sociocultural parameters of the content of education is the use of authentic material. Authentic material is oral and written texts, as well as other cultural objects, which are the real product of native speakers not intended for educational purposes, not adapted for the needs of students, taking into account their level of language proficiency.E.N. Solovova refers to authentic materials various announcements in a foreign language, news of radio and television, various instructions and announcements, performances of actors, stories of interlocutors, telephone conversations, as well as films, songs, and video clips.

Authentic texts have several advantages over educational texts, as they reflect the facts and characteristics of national culture. Through authentic materials, students acquire new linguistic and geographical and sociolinguistic knowledge, cultural values of native speakers of the studied language, and sociocultural competence is formed. Recreating live real life texts arouses students' interest, willingness to discuss material, enter into discussion, and successful understanding leads to increased motivation in further language learning. Students, faced with sociocultural, as well as linguistic aspects of the studied language: aphorisms, idioms and phraseological units, get the opportunity to compare and analyze, find similarities and differences in the development of two cultures and languages.

The inclusion of authentic materials in the work also creates favorable conditions for the development of students' communication skills. In addition, authentic texts are characterized by lively intonation of colloquial speech, natural emotionality, placeholders, pauses - characteristic signs of natural informal communication, which also increases the motivation to learn a foreign language. At the same time, authentic material carries certain difficulties, such as the complexity of the language material. Authentic material is characterized by ellipticity, the use of abbreviated forms, the strict logical relationship of individual parts, the sequence of presentation, the development of the utterance, the presence of terms and proper names.

E.V. Nosovich and R.P. Milrud distinguish the following criteria of authenticity:

• -    cultural authenticity - involves familiarity with the culture of the countries of the language being studied, with the peculiarities of life and mentality of their citizens;

• -    informational authenticity - assumes the availability of new information that should interest the recipient;

• -    situational authenticity - implies the naturalness of the situation, the interest of native speakers in the stated topic, the naturalness of its discussion;

• -    the authenticity of the national mentality - reflects the national specificity of the country for which the material is intended;

• -    reactive authenticity is the ability of a text to evoke authentic emotions, a mental, verbal response. Various means belong to reactive authenticity: interjections, exclamatory sentences, rhetorical questions, reinforcing constructions;

• -    authenticity of design - in audio texts it is a sound line: traffic noise, passers-by conversations, phone calls, without this work with text loses the properties of real communication

The reconstruction of conditions close to the real conditions of intercultural communication is possible through pair or group work in foreign language lessons. To carry out such communication, it is necessary to strictly follow the rules of ethics of discussion communication, give examples to students of ethically acceptable forms of self-expression, and recall the speech model of building intercultural communication.

Sociocultural competence is a complex whole, one of the components of which is equivalent vocabulary, toponymy, proper names. These components are reflected in such sources of information as genre-stylistic varieties of authentic texts that contain sociocultural and linguistic and regional information about the country of the language being studied.

The use of authentic audio and video materials, as well as the assimilation of sociocultural and linguistic and regional information contained in them, is a prerequisite for students to achieve the appropriate level of sociocultural competence necessary for intercultural communication. In the selection of these materials, as well as in the process of their organization, one should be guided by the general didactic and proper methodological principles of teaching a foreign language. Let us turn to the requirements for the selection of materials for the formation of sociocultural competence. Such requirements are the following:

• -    the authenticity of the materials used;

• -    information saturation; - the novelty of the information for the addressee;

• -    modernity and actual historicism;

• -    taking into account the interests of students (including professional), as well as hobbies, preferences;

• -    correspondence of speech utterances to the literary norm of the studied foreign language;

• -    regional and linguistic and regional significance of materials;

• -    selection and use of teaching materials in accordance with the levels of foreign language proficiency of students (taking into account the principle of accessibility and feasibility);

• -    organization of selected materials in accordance with the principles of thematic and increasing complexity

One of the productive ways of developing students' sociocultural competence is audio texts recorded in real situations of intercultural communication or read by native speakers. They represent not only the sounding English speech in the original, but also represent the traditional areas of communication within the framework of another foreign language culture, demonstrate the speech and language model of communication of native speakers.

In the process of conducting a dialogue of cultures, a functionally determined communicative interaction of representatives of different nationalities is carried out, for which certain ethnopsychological and linguistic features are characteristic. Using a language form without taking these features into account can lead to the fact that behavioral reactions of participants in intercultural communication will reflect their own cultural standards that are different from the cultural values of the speakers of the studied language.

Authentic footage is a great source for learning a foreign language. Authentic video material can be of various contents and design: video recipes; short films; commercials; music videos; television games; interview; feature films, documentaries, animated films; excerpts from television programs; video recordings of television news: reports, weather forecasts, incidents, news events; educational programs for children and adolescents; Sketches sports and entertainment programs; TV discussions and TV debates, etc.

Authentic video material is the most effective way of forming and developing students' sociocultural competence, an effective method of activating the speech-cognitive activity of schoolchildren. Students receive visual information about the traditions, cultural characteristics and linguistic realities of the country of the studied language. The use of video material helps to individualize the learning process, meet the needs of self-development and increase the motivation for dialogue of cultures in a foreign language.

Consequently, the use of authentic video materials allows us to solve the following problems:

• •    enables students to get acquainted with the “language in a living context” ie “Connects the lesson with the real world and shows the language in action” ;

• •    develops attention, memory, intellectual and creative abilities;

• •    helps to combine different types of communication activities: listening, speaking, reading and writing;

• •      contributes to the intensification of the educational process, as

information presented in visual and audible form is assimilated easier and faster;

• •      increases the motivation and activity of students, creates an

atmosphere of joint cognitive activity, provides an incentive for further independent work;

• •      Helps to master intercultural communication skills.

The effectiveness of the use of videos depends on the rational organization of classes. Authentic video material can be used both for the introduction of new material and its activation, as well as at the final stage of work on the topic. One of the educational tasks that can be solved using video is the repetition of vocabulary and the expansion of vocabulary. The use of authentic video materials helps students to establish stable associations of a certain situational context with expected speech behavior, stimulate imagination and creative activity, attract all kinds of attention and memory, as well as increase interest in the subject and the effectiveness of its study.

So, authentic material is an effective and efficient means of developing students' sociocultural competence in foreign language lessons, since with the help of this material there is a genuine acquaintance with the culture of the countries of the language being studied, with the peculiarities of life and mentality of their citizens, which meets the cognitive needs of students.

An important factor in the formation of sociocultural competence is the use of new teaching technologies. Critical thinking technology, project activities, training in collaboration and gaming technologies, developmental learning technology increase interest in foreign language communication, expand its subject matter.

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