The technology for the development of linguistic and cultural competence as the basis of intercultural communication while using a study guide

Modern intercultural education is determined by practical challenges of intercultural communication, i.e. learning about the target language culture. For this purpose, teachers should use many linguistic and cultural materials during classes and develop linguistic and cultural competence in students to provide their effective communication with native speakers. The study describes the techniques applied to present linguistic and cultural resources to trainees when developing the above-mentioned competence focusing on understanding the phenomenon of another country and its culture in comparison with the culture, lifestyle, and character of their country. The author presents a novel study guide entitled Linguistic and Cultural Studies. Russia: Country and People, describes its methodological principles (cognitive, linguistic and cultural, communicative ones), the selection criteria for topics, the types of texts, and tasks. The tasks designed to develop skills in dealing with the substantive and semantic structure of the text are considered from the perspective of the psychological patterns of memory. In the course of comprehension, the text is compressed into inner speech scheme in the form of meaningful and semantic bases that leads to better memorization and serves as the subject logic diagram when expanding and generating students’ statement on the topic. The development of linguistic and cultural competence with the help of texts from the study guide is completed with the presentation, the oral or written report on a similar subject of a section/lesson based on the information about students’ country. In a multinational group, intercultural dialog will promote mutual understanding and spiritual enrichment of the representatives of different linguistic and cultural communities.