FOSTERING NATIONAL IDENTITY THOUGH ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING AT SCHOOL LEVEL
It is well-known that learning a foreign language should go hand in hand with studying the culture of countries where this language is used as the main means of communication. Students should be ready for intercultural communication being aware of specific cultural features of those cultures. Nevertheless, being able to present one's native culture in the target foreign language is no less important for intercultural communication. It is apparent that foreign language teaching should also be focused on preparing students for presenting their cultural heritage in conversations with foreigners. With this idea and the Federal Standard of Russian Secondary Education in mind we created a coursebook for Russian schoolchildren, which would not only teach them English and the culture of English-speaking countries, but would also juxtapose it with Russian cultural heritage. From our perspective, this method is essential for fostering civil identity in Russian schoolchildren by means of the English language. The implementation of this method in the “English” ESL course published by “Akademkniga/Uchebnik” under academic supervision of Prof. S.G. Ter-Minasova will be outlined.