Developing Socio–Cultural Competence within the English Language Classroom: The Case of Undergraduate Students of the HSE SoFL Program "Foreign Languages and Intercultural Communication"

This research is devoted to examining the level of socio-cultural competence (SCC) development among first-year undergraduate students enrolled in the compulsory course “Practical English Language Course: Grammar, Phonetics, Practice of Oral and Written Speech” as part of their degree program “Foreign Languages and Intercultural Communication” at the School of Foreign Languages, HSE University, through the lens of students’ ability to represent their own country. In the theoretical part of this study, SCC is considered as a component of communicative competence. Building on this, the concept of the “student as a cultural ambassador” or “cultural ambassadorship skill” was introduced and explained as an integral element of SCC, reflecting learners' ability to represent their country's social and cultural characteristics in intercultural communication. Five core elements of cultural ambassadorship were also described, namely: mediation, narrativisation of cultural heritage, expression of cultural identity, operationalisation of cultural codes and critical cultural consciousness. Together, these components formed the basis for developing the assessment criteria and targeted instructional teaching activities. In the empirical part, a multifaceted approach to data collection and analysis was presented, which included content-analysis of the course materials, lesson observations, student surveys, interviews with faculty members, a quasi-experiment and student feedback after the experimental teaching. The content-analysis revealed that only 4% of tasks were related to cultural ambassadorship development. Both observations and interviews confirmed the presence of a general socio-cultural component in the materials, while also highlighting a lack of tasks focusing on the representation of students’ native cultures. Moreover, student surveys showed that the primary focus of lessons was on English-speaking and other foreign cultures, while discussions of students' own cultures were minimal. During the quasi-experiment, the experimental group undertook specially designed activities aimed at developing the cultural ambassadorship skill. A comparative analysis of the pre- and post-intervention outcomes revealed notable progress in the experimental group, compared to the control group where minimal progress was observed. The students’ feedback supported the effectiveness and potential value of the implemented activities. Thus, the results obtained demonstrated the success of the implemented methodological framework, confirming that the purpose of the study was achieved. The study concluded with final recommendations emphasizing the importance of SCC, particularly its cultural ambassadorship component, and the necessity of implementing targeted teaching activities in FLT to foster students’ ability to represent their country's culture, thereby enhancing their intercultural awareness and effectiveness in global communication.