Natalya V. Matveeva

The sociolinguistic component is one of the important elements of foreign language teaching. For a long time, it has had the status of a competence of the second or even third order in regard to communicative and sociocultural competences. However, recently there has appeared a drift to raise its status as high as an approach. The aim of the article is to find out how far the development of the sociolinguistic approach has progressed in the context of foreign language teaching in higher educational institutions and how valid its allocation into an independent approach is. The research is carried out on the material of an array of publications by domestic and foreign authors, which are in open access on e-library and research gate platforms and cover the period from 2000 to 2023. As a result, two groups of works devoted to the use of the sociolinguistic approach in teaching foreign languages in higher education are identified. Practice-oriented works open up its application in teaching certain aspects of the language, types of speech activity, as well as describe certain tools or toolkits that can be used to implement the approach in practice. The theoretical works formulate some provisions of the sociolinguistic approach: they substantiate its place in the system of foreign language teaching in relation to other approaches, formulate its main tasks and develop its conceptual apparatus. The authors of the article reveal that at present there is no holistic perception of the sociolinguistic approach to foreign language teaching, and identify a range of issues to discuss, their solution possibly making a significant impact on building the theoretical basis of the approach under consideration. Such debatable issues include the relationship "individual – general" in speech characteristics of a certain social group, the attitude to standard and substandard language, the influence of social context on foreign language teaching conditions. The expediency of singling out the sociolinguistic approach in the realm of culture-based approaches remains open at the moment. The study pays special attention to the specificity of the sociolinguistic component manifested in the conditions of foreign language teaching at non-language universities.

The article relevance is determined by the search for new methods of involving college and university students in patriotic education through working with the materials developed in English. In the authors’ opinion, usage of an educational computer game can be such an innovative method. The purpose of the study is to identify the particularities of using such games, approaches for deeper emotional involvement of young people in gaming activities, and to clarify the content of the stages/phases of game development. Research methods and materials include analysis of foreign and domestic scientific and methodological literature on the use of computer games for educational purposes, clarification of the content of development and integration phases, and analysis of the use of the computer game developed. The results of the study highlighted the particularities of computer games for patriotic education of Russian youth. Firstly, at the stage of initiating of a computer game development, pedagogical goals should be formulated, as they determine the genre of the game, its mechanics, the sequence of historical situations for visualization in graphic form. Secondly, patriotic messages in a computer game can be delivered by means of computer graphics. Thirdly, the authors recommend to supplement the alpha version of the educational computer game with an independent review, evaluation and certification. Finally, the study showed that the teacher during the communication with the students participating in gaming activity should follow the principles of pedagogical ethics: providing clear instructions on how to pass through the game; respect for students independence, their focus on success; providing a sound feedback and valuable comments both on the topic of the game itself, and on technical issues or assessment of cognitive activity; voluntary participation and confidentiality should be ensured as well. Under the circumstances of distance learning, such games can be a drive for young people to gain experience in using digital Internet resources, for organizing discussions in English devoted to memorable dates of the Russian history during English classes.

Introduction gives an idea of the importance of learning English grammar to Russian college and University students in the context of continuity in foreign language education. The purpose of the article is to identify the common features and differences in the current state of teaching grammar to Russian non-linguistic college and University students, to identify problems and offer ways to solve them. The methodology and methods of research include the analysis of foreign and domestic scientific and methodological literature on teaching grammar, comparison of foreign language exemplary programs for colleges and universities, practical comparison of the perception of the grammatical issues by college and University students. The results of the study showed that the process of Russian non-linguistic colleges and University students’ grammatical skills formation has common problems. Firstly, it is the absence of grammar topics and grammar exercises in many ESP textbooks, and secondly, the most general form of description of the content of teaching grammar in exemplary programs for both colleges and universities, with no links between grammatical and lexical topics. Comparing the requirements of the Federal State Educational Standards of secondary vocational and higher education shows that University graduates, unlike college graduates, need to know grammar for both oral and written speech production, as they will not only communicate with colleagues, but also prepare presentations, write articles, theses, abstracts and some other kinds of texts. Experimental lessons show that it takes college students more time to master grammatical skills than University students, and college students have smaller vocabulary. In order to ensure continuity in language education, it is necessary to include certain grammatical topics necessary for the development of writing skills into college working programs. Learning grammar is closely related to lexical skills. Thus it is necessary to encourage college students to enlarge their vocabulary, so they have their lexical base equal to the level of University entrants. Teaching English grammar at the University needs professionally-oriented vocabulary to move forward to foreign language competence development.