THE POTENTIAL OF HUMOROUS TEXTS FOR THE FORMATION OF SOCIOCULTURAL COMPETENCE OF FOREIGN STUDENTS STUDYING AT NON-LINGUISTIC UNIVERSITIES

Foreign languages acquisition with the help of which it becomes possible for foreign students to study and to make their stay in the host country comfortable involves the formation and development of not only linguistic, speech and occupational components of communicative competence in general, but also the sociocultural one, which contains a synthesis of skills and abilities necessary for using cross-cultural, linguistic and cultural, as well as sociolinguistic knowledge. The research relevance is determined by linguodidactic potential of humorous texts for a comprehensive development of foreign students' competences and by the insufficient number of professional research works devoted to this issue. The paper aims to present theoretical and methodological foundations of using humorous texts for the acquisition of sociocultural knowledge and skills by foreign students of non-linguistic universities, which contribute to their efficient development and academic achievements; to check the effectiveness of implementing such resources into the educational process at the lessons of the Russian and Ukrainian languages. The following research methods were used: the scientific literature review in the fields of philosophy, aesthetics, linguistics, cultural studies, methodology in language teaching in order to define the essence of “the comic” as a multi-aspect phenomenon; analysis and description of linguistic factors and semantic models with the help of which the humoristic effect is achieved; the overview of textbooks of Ukrainian and Russian as foreign languages that contain humorous text material with socio-cultural component; conducting surveys of students with subsequent quantitative and qualitative data analysis, analysis of written and oral responses; the monitoring of students' academic performance. Foreign students demonstrate the ability to understand the basic structure and potential of the comic, which is achieved by means of the language they are learning (Ukrainian or Russian).The following linguistic techniques are usually used in educational texts offered for studying Ukrainian and Russian as foreign languages: unexpected phrases that violate the principle of compatibility of lexical meanings, homonyms, occasionalisms, conversational or colloquial words and expressions, technical terms, modern or historical anthroponyms and toponyms. The semantic space of such texts helps to develop communicative, social and cultural competences that in their turn enhance the overall academic success of foreign citizens who receive higher non-linguistic education at Ukrainian universities. It has been proved that these methods improve foreign students' communication skills and their academic performance in general, as well as increase their motivation to study and learn more about the country whose language they are studying.