Multicultural foreign language teaching of future lawyers
The article aims to study multiculturalism as a modern reality and implement this theoretical knowledge into the process of foreign language teaching of future lawyers. Appeal to philosophy and culturology makes it possible to see the deeper truth about upbringing and teaching as multiethnic phenomena, identify effective strategies of multicultural foreign language teaching. The authors of the article consider the process of foreign language teaching of non - linguistic higher school students from the aspect of developing their professional competences in close contact with foreign peers in international groupwork providing the acknowledgement of pluralism and equivalence of customs and beliefs represented in the academic community of different countries. The notions of multicultural and intercultural education are separated as the first deals with the ideas of humanism and diversity of people on our planet and the second - with interethnic relations. Both ideas are combined in this research to strengthen the course of English language teaching to students - future lawyers with practices of real interaction with representatives of law departments of foreign universities. The combination of the dialogue approach (communication with partners on cultural differences in legal sphere), the competence - based approach (getting skilled in finding out information on solving legal issues taking into account ethnic and national aspects of a certain country), and the socio - psychological approach (developing socio - oriented and value - oriented predispositions, communicative and empathic skills) proves to be effective to implement the elaborated procedure of professional interaction between students in international groups. The methodological procedure suggested by the authors contains culturally enriched topics within legal sphere, the work on each is based on three main components: material study, whole group communication and focused project - oriented communication in pairs or mini - groups. The results show that students - future international lawyers start understanding that some seemingly dead end situations may be regarded from different positive perspectives due to international interaction and taking into account interethnic characteristics of the problem.