FORMATION OF SENIOR STUDENTS’
SOCIOCULTURAL COMPETENCE BY MEANS
OF BLOG TECHNOLOGY
Luiza R. Zakirova
Kazan (Volga Region) Federal University, Russia.
Marianna E. Yashina
Kazan (Volga Region) Federal University, Russia.
Mariya B. Kazachkova
Moscow State Institute of International Relations (University), Russia.
E-mail: clivia29@yandex.ru
Recepción: 05/08/2019 Aceptación: 09/09/2019 Publicación: 23/10/2019
Citación sugerida:
Zakirova, L.R., Yashina, M.E. y Kazachkova, M.B. (2019). Formation of senior
students’ sociocultural competence by means of blog technology. 3C TIC. Cuadernos
de desarrollo aplicados a las TIC. Edición Especial, Octubre 2019, 140-151. doi: https://doi.
org/10.17993/3ctic.2019.83-2.140-151
Suggested citation:
Zakirova, L.R., Yashina, M.E. & Kazachkova, M.B. (2019). Formation of senior
students’ sociocultural competence by means of blog technology. 3C TIC. Cuadernos
de desarrollo aplicados a las TIC. Special Issue, October 2019, 140-151. doi: https://doi.
org/10.17993/3ctic.2019.83-2.140-151
3C TIC. Cuadernos de desarrollo aplicados a las TIC. ISSN: 2254-6529
142
ABSTRACT
This article is devoted to the research of the formation of sociocultural competence
in the process of teaching a foreign language at the senior stage with the help of the
blog technology. The relevance of this article is because sociocultural competence
is one of the structural components of communicative competence, which is key
in the context of global intercultural communication. The aim of the research is
to provide the theoretical basis and practical verication of the eectiveness of
using blog technology in the formation of the sociocultural competence of senior
students in a foreign language class. In the research, the authors analysed the
characteristics of the blog and the benets of its use, revealed that using the blog
technology can develop almost all types of speech activities: writing, reading and
listening, as well as improve the sociocultural competence of students. Obviously,
the blog technology has many advantages compared to other technologies, as it
includes all types of information. Consequently, the blog provides an opportunity
to implement various tasks. The article describes the experimental work, namely,
its purpose, tasks, stages, conditions, content, methods of teaching the formation
of the sociocultural competence of senior students.
KEYWORDS
Foreign language, Socio-cultural competence, Intercultural interaction, Blog,
Information technologies.
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1. INTRODUCTION
In the period of globalization, the study of a foreign language becomes a
necessity for integration in the modern world. The high degree of mobility
of people around the world leads to intercultural interaction. In this regard,
according to the new educational standards of June 5, 2012, each graduate of
the Russian school is obliged to master at a certain level at least one foreign
language. However, language learning includes many aspects, one of which is
sociocultural. Direct communication with native speakers requires competence
not only in matters of grammar and phonetics of a foreign language, but also
in the eld of foreign culture, traditions and customs. The signicance of the
sociocultural component is often underestimated, although it is precisely it, in our
opinion, that can contribute to the transformation of the English language into a
subject-specic discipline in Russian secondary schools.
The peculiarity of a foreign language functioning is that its communicative
function provides intercultural communication. The interdisciplinary nature of
the content of the subject “foreign language” has favourable opportunities for
creating a wide sociocultural educational space, while using the sociocultural
approach in language education that gives a new, deeper and more meaningful
discovery of all components of the concept of functional sociocultural literacy.
Socio-cultural competence can be achieved at the expense of other disciplines,
and such sources of sociocultural information as literature, mass media, the
Internet, and lms and can be an essential addition to the development of
sociocultural competence.
The knowledge of the native speakers’ culture provides with a deeper mutual
understanding. The main thing in the process of learning is not only the
accumulation of information about the country, but also the knowledge of
people, their peers, the way of thinking, behaviour, and attitude to human values.
We can say that culture and intercultural communication problems should be
presented in educational process as global education objectives. However, the
new concept of sociocultural education requires serious didactic thinking, choice
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of approach to learning a foreign language which can provide socialization of
training foreign language communication and connection of communicative
activity of students with cognitive research to the study of sociocultural portrait
of native speakers (Rakhimova, 2017; Kheirabadi & Mirzaei, 2019; Nakhaee &
Nasrabadi, 2019; Alipichev et al., 2017).
We tried to analyse a theoretical basis and practical verication of the eectiveness
of using blog technology in the formation of the sociocultural competence of
senior students at the lessons of a foreign language. While analysing the term
“sociocultural competence” we resorted to educational literature on the research
topic; theoretically and experimentally substantiated the eectiveness of the
use of blog technology in the formation of the sociocultural competence of
senior students; developed educational and methodical recommendations on
the formation of the sociocultural competence of senior students based on the
Google Blogger service (Kashisaz & Mobarak, 2018; Eslami & Ahmadi, 2019;
Jabbari et al., 2019).
The theoretical basis of this work was the scientic works of Russian and foreign
methodologists on the formation of sociocultural competence in foreign language
lessons such as Bim (2003), Bayram (1997), Galskova (2000), Sysoev (2004),
Shakiba & Delqandi (2018).
According to Sut (2003), sociocultural competence can be dened as the students’
ability to accomplish proper cross-cultural communication, whereas Nikitenko
(2005) wrote that sociocultural competence is represented in the knowledge of
the language (non-equivalent and normal vocabulary), knowledge of national
culture, and the norms of behaviour.
It is worth mentioning that modern methodological research is based on the
linguistic approach of teaching a foreign language. At the same time, vocabulary
with a cross-cultural component, cross-cultural information, aecting the most
diverse aspects of the life of the country of the studied language, its history,
literature, science, art, as well as traditions, customs and customs, are highlighted.
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The linguistic and cultural aspect contributes to the enrichment of the subject-
content plan. Its more thorough selection and earlier use of a foreign language in
school is one of the reserves for increasing its activity.
Culture in its various directions contributes to the formation of a person’s
personality. “Foreign Language Culture” is the issue that can provide students
with the process of mastering a foreign language in the educational, cognitive,
developmental and educational aspects.
The elements that make up the content of a “foreign language culture” are the
following:
1) A set of knowledge about the language being studied, about the functions of
the language in society, about the culture of the country of the language being
studied, about the ways of most eectively mastering the language as a means
of communication, about the possibilities of the inuence of the learning
process on the students’ personality, and all this is called the conditional
element – knowledge;
2) Experience in the implementation of speech and learning activities - learning
and speech skills;
3) The ability to perform all the speech functions necessary to meet their needs
and the needs of society;
4) The experience of an emotional attitude to the process of mastering a foreign
language culture to the teacher and students as speech partners, to the
language being studied as an academic subject, to the role of language in
the life of society ‒ an experience turned to the system of personal values or
otherwise ‒ motivation.
Mastering a foreign language as a means of intercultural communication
is impossible without knowledge of the socio-cultural and sociolinguistic
characteristics of the target language country (Ostroumova et al., 2014; Sailaukyzy
et al., 2018). Using cross-cultural information in the learning process increases
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students’ cognitive activity, examines their communicative abilities, favors their
communication skills and abilities, as well as positive motivation, provides an
incentive for independent work on the language and contributes to solving
educational tasks.
The main purpose of teaching a foreign language in the secondary school is
to develop the personality of the pupil in close connection with the teaching
of the culture of the country of a foreign language contributing to the desire
to participate in intercultural communication and independently improve in the
classroom activities.
2. METHODS
In the course of the research we used the following methods: analysis of scientic
and methodological literature on the research problem, scientic observation,
generalization of the results of the experimental work. The relationships between
theoretical stance, pedagogical context and research approach.
3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
In the process of the research, we analysed the methodological literature of
Russian and foreign authors on the formation of sociocultural competence at
the senior stage in secondary school. Sociocultural competence is one of the
structural components of communicative competence, which is key in the context
of global intercultural communication. Thus, the formation of “sociocultural
competence” in a secondary school is usually understood to mean familiarizing
students with the realities of the country/countries of the language being studied,
their culture and customs within certain themes and situations of communication
necessary for the successful implementation of intercultural communication. In
accordance with the Federal State Educational Standard of Secondary General
Education (GEF SOO) for 10-11 grades dated October 6, 2009, clause 9.1.2,
students must acquire communicative competence in the subject “Foreign
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Language” (basic level) in order to successfully socialize and fulll themselves,
and also use a foreign language as a “tool of intercultural communication in the
modern multicultural world”. In addition, according to the GEF SOO, students
should acquire knowledge about the countries of the language being studied,
considering its socio-cultural component. One of the requirements for the
“portrait of a high school student” is also “the ability to build one’s speech and
nonverbal behaviour adequately to this specicity; the ability to single out what
is common and dierent in the culture of one’s native country and the country /
countries of the language being studied”.
Communicative competence is the main purpose of teaching a foreign language
at school, but it includes several subcompetences, such as sociocultural and
sociolinguistic, which should be included in the ZUN (knowledge, skills) of a
graduate of a secondary school in the Russian Federation.
It is not possible to implement the formation of communicative competence
without knowledge from the eld of linguistic studies, since each foreign word is
a product of a foreign language culture and reects the internal structure of the
language.
4. SUMMARY
To increase the eciency of shaping sociocultural competence among
schoolchildren, we suggested using the blog technology Web 2.0. The term
“weblog” or “blog” was rst used by Jorn Barger in 1997. Blogs have become
widely used since 2001 and are now widespread. The rst blog was an annotated
list of bookmarks, open to the general public.
IT-technologies set new trends in dierent spheres including education and
pedagogy. Teaching English as a foreign language and education in general is a
huge ground for development (Gatiyatullina et al., 2018).
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In the process of the research we analysed the characteristic features of the blog
and the benets of using blog technology. Moreover, we found out that with the
help of blog technology it is possible to develop almost all types of speech activity:
writing, reading and listening, as well as improving the sociocultural competence
of students. Obviously, the blog technology has many advantages compared to
other technologies, as it brings together all types of information. Consequently,
the blog provides an opportunity to implement the tasks of a dierent plan.
The research is aimed at the practical study of the problem of the formation
of sociocultural competence in a comprehensive school. The main goal of any
scientic research is to improve the educational process, so the experiment is one
of the main research methods. In this regard, in order to test the eectiveness of
the use of blog technology, we carried out experimental work in which 30 senior
students participated. The practical part of the experimental work was carried
out based on the Municipal Public Educational Institution “Secondary School
N.º 2” of the city of Leninogorsk. The main goal of our experimental work is the
approbation of an educational and methodological complex that contributes to
the eective formation of the sociocultural competence of senior students.
In the course of the experiment, an educational Internet blog was developed and
tested, aimed at improving the formation of the sociocultural competence of
senior students. The lessons in the control group were carried out in accordance
with the program, in the traditional question-answer form. The educational
process in the experimental group, in turn, was also carried out in accordance
with the program requirements, but in an unconventional form (using the
educational web blog).
5. CONCLUSIONS
The control slice of students’ knowledge, as well as the results of the comparative
characteristics of the successful implementation of tasks of the experimental
group at the ascertaining and nal stages showed the following:
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1) The level of sociocultural competence in the experimental group is higher
than in the control group.
2) The level of formation of sociocultural competence in the experimental group
at the nal stage is much higher than at the ascertaining stage.
The results obtained allowed us to talk about the eectiveness of the use of
the educational blog we developed in English lessons in order to increase the
sociocultural competence of senior students.
In the course of this scientic study, we concluded that the Internet resources
created by native speakers and teachers of the English language make it possible
to improve the eciency of teaching a foreign language. Besides, students
learn to transfer already available knowledge of a foreign language to new
sociocultural situations and problems, to see contradictions, having at the same
time independence of judgements (Rachimova et al., 2016). Moreover, they get the
opportunity to perceive the natural form of the language, which corresponds to
the realities of the English-speaking countries, while increasing their competence
in linguistic and social and cultural aspects.
6. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The work is performed according to the Russian Government Program of
Competitive Growth of Kazan Federal University.
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