EMOTIONAL AND AXIOLOGICAL COMPONENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING: DIDACTIC OUTLINE

Abstract

According to the generally accepted concept, shaping students’ intercultural awareness is an indispensable component of foreign language acquisition in modern secondary school. In order to achieve this goal in the process of learning students are taught facts relevant to a particular culture. The author emphasizes that such encounters with various cultural phenomena not only boost students’ cognitive development, but also trigger their emotional response and contribute to forming value attitudes. By trying to critically understand various cultural aspects or contrast them with their national culture, students develop their own patterns of personal attitudes and behaviors. Emotional and value attitudes supplement the cognitive component and represent axiological
component of the learning content. Until recently the implementation of axiological component in the process of learning has
had a sporadic nature and was not properly considered by methodologists (the author explains this by vague nature of values and lack of assessment criteria). The author emphasizes that by incorporating axiological component in the content of foreign language learning, students can achieve better learning outcomes which determine their active personal position as well as foster development of social and intercultural competences. Besides, person with established system of values is able to make sensible decisions and contributes to sustainable development of mankind and achieving global harmony.
Shaping student’s awareness and their system of values is a long-term process. In this respect the author suggests that axiological elements are to supplement each topic to be learned at FL classes at school. Whereas in primary school students are informed on the main cultural aspects; in secondary and high school the emphasis is shifted to problem-solving tasks which require student’s critical thinking and own feedback. Axiological aspects have to be integrated in student’s communicative activity. Nevertheless, problems remain: it is impossible to define a system of values to be taught at school due to their vague nature, besides they depend on culture; as a result it is impossible to define criteria for assessing the level of student’s axiological development.