Using small talk as a tool of students' communicative competence development while learning the foreign language

The paper studies the issue of using phatic communication in the form of Small Talk for student's communicative competence development while learning the English language at higher school. Small Talk is an unusual way of communication for Russian-speaking students which makes it difficult to interact in the situations of informal communication both in learning process and during progress tests. The authors apply the method of theoretical analysis of Russian and foreign literature to find out the main factors which determine the success of the communication in the form of Small Talk. The reasons and the difficulties which Russian-speaking students face while developing such type of communication were analyzed. Socio-cultural and psychological reasons of students' difficulties in phatic communication development were described. The paper analyzes the approaches to the assessment of communicative competence development in the situation of Small Talk. The necessity of the development and the introduction of quantitative methods to assess Small Talk were justified.