Acquisition of Socio-Cultural Competence via Dynamic Learning Environment

Abstract

The global, political, and business processes raised the problem of socio-cultural competence and the formation of tolerance in cross-cultural communication. The issue gets its importance due to technological development and the necessity for specialists to be involved in constant relations. Foreign language skill is an integral component of the attractiveness of vocational specialist and the tool that helps one to move ahead quickly in today's business world. It is also a method to build professional culture, to develop a broad, holistic and encyclopedic viewpoint. The introduction of socio-cultural competence in teaching Business English will help students to have the idea about socio-cultural peculiarities in overseas business activities, thereby, providing opportunity to be fitted in the international business community. This paper aims to give a comprehensive account of dynamic learning environment (DLE) in teaching socio-cultural capabilities and its benefits to knowledge durability. DLE enables students to be immersed in the study material, and observe the situations of real business communication practices. The experiment was conducted with undergraduates (aged 18-19) of KFU within English language classes. The groups were taught with and without DLE involvement. Real groups observation, questionnaires, comparative analysis of Moodle and common classroom practices provided data for the research. The experiment proved that acquisition of socio-cultural capabilities is organized more efficiently via DLE. The authors also combine the results with the peculiarities of subjects who represent the new generation of computer and gadget literate community. Exploiting the specificity of new generation perception, the authors recommend to use the findings for the construction of syllabuses.