Developing General Cultural Literacy through Teaching English in a Russian University: Competence and Semiotic Approach

Abstract

The article is devoted to some of the issues of teaching English in a Russian university, which arouse as a result of introducing new educational standards and it discusses the ways of forming students’ general cultural competence by using authentic curricula, in order to meet the requirements of those standards. It also shows the importance of semiotics for acquisition a foreign language and culture, and reveals the worth of “personalia” as a culture language sign, as well as peculiarity of its functioning, which lies in its ability to represent social and cultural values and priorities in personal-precedential form, thus making a contribution to developingan individual’sconcept scheme and, consequently, general cultural literacy.

Keywords

• general cultural competence
• sign
• personalia
• concept scheme
• federal educational standards
• higher educational institutions
• English language teaching