Teaching students how to use a socio-cultural digital object in learning a foreign language

The article considers the role of sociocultural competence in foreign language teaching within the framework of the modern communicative approach with reference to the Federal State Educational Standard. The concept of ‘sociocultural competence’ is discussed and defined in accordance with the requirements prescribed by the programme of the subject ‘Foreign Language’ in high school. It is concluded that nowadays it is important to be able not only to communicate with a representative of a foreign culture and understand the peculiarities of their social and speech behaviour, but also to present and to represent one’s own culture in intercultural situations. A descriptive analysis of English language teaching aids of different decades is carried out. The comparison shows that in contrast to modern school textbooks, teaching manuals and methodological literature of the late 20th century contains more country studies material. Despite thorough studies of the issue of cultural interaction in foreign language teaching carried out by scholars, the use of sociocultural authentic pragmatic material is only becoming relevant. The demand for the use of authentic internet resources in teaching a non-native language is highlighted. Based on the requirements to the subject results in the aspects of sociocultural knowledge and skills in students, suitable official websites of the Englishspeaking world realia are selected. These sites include detailed sociocultural information. Based on the analysis of the structure and content of the selected resources, a reference material is developed to support high school students’ work with a sociocultural digital object - an official website of English-speaking world realia. This reference material will be useful both for a high school teacher of English in preparing a lesson outline and for a student in improving sociocultural, linguistic and strategic competences.