Significance of the ‘National and Cultural Component’ When Teaching Foreign Languages (Using Korean as an Example)

Abstract

Key approaches to clarify the notion of the national and cultural component were explored in application to the task of teaching lexical means of communication to Russian speaking students. The authors highlight its significant features that are important in terms of the teaching methods. A number of conclusions, which are significant for this task, were made based on the results of analyzing Korean sememes. The meanings, which are correlated with the national-cultural information conveying ethnocultural realities of the native speakers of the studied language, were determined. Groups of actual issues related to the determination of the scope of national-cultural information to be mastered by the students, mechanisms of its transmission in teaching and methods for the formation of relevant associations and images were highlighted. It is shown that the scope of accumulation of national-cultural information can vary at a certain level of education, therefore, it seems reasonable to talk about the list of associations as additional information to a certain lexical meaning, which has yet to become knowledge and be subsequently used at the stages of training and application of forming the lexical skills. It is stated that in respect of the linguo-didactic aspect it seems more rational to talk about a certain number of associations necessary for complete disclosure of the lexical meaning of the words, since neither translation nor non-translation methods of semantization by themselves allow students to differentiate the corresponding concepts without additional national-cultural information. Thus, methods of the most effective delivery of such information are to be specified for better results of teaching lexical means of communication to students.