Fedicheva N. V. The Cultural Component in Teaching English as a Foreign Language in Ukraine

Fedicheva N. V., Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Department of Oriental Languages, Luhansk Taras Shevchenko National University.

Abstract
The article discusses the inseparability of culture and language teaching, explores some challenges that teachers of English as a foreign language in Ukraine face today in terms of developing cultural understanding, and argues in favor of the inclusion of students’ own culture, in our case Ukrainian cultural phenomena, into English language teaching practices. With this publication, the author continues her decades-long exploration of the problem of raising cultural awareness in the context of foreign language teaching/learning, thus enriching its studies with a retrospective longitudinal analysis.
The data that the author has collected by conducting surveys, analyzing textbooks, and doing observations are presented. In this regard, the author provides the analysis of the most popular textbooks (Enterprise, Opportunities, Cutting Edge, Headways, Upstream, etc.), approved by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, and defines their potential in familiarizing students with the culture and traditions of other countries.
Ideas on how to tangibly infuse cultural goals into language teaching are offered. These include determining the objectives of culture teaching, selecting on their basis appropriate cultural material, and introducing the techniques of cultural instruction. The latter are represented, for example, by culture capsules developed by D. Taylor in 1970, but quite rarely used in textbooks, as well as by intercultural connections and critical incidents, designed by the author.

Key words: a cultural component, a scheme, local culture, techniques.

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