FORMING PRIMARY SCHOOL CHILDREN’S SOCIOCULTURAL COMPETENCE BY USING LINGUISTIC COUNTRY STUDYING CONTENT

The aim of the article is to study the role of linguistic country studying content in learning the English language and the ways of forming primary schoolchildren's linguistic country studying competence. According to reforming the system of foreign language education in Ukraine it should be selected in the context of intercultural paradigm. Linguistic country study solves a number of problems, including the main philological problem of adequate understanding of the foreign speech which is the basis of linguistics. While interpreting the foreign speech, pupils should understand it, selecting the appropriate equivalents in the native language. The author thinks that authentic linguistic country studying materials contribute to the qualitative understanding and producing foreign speech. The stages of the work with authentic content are presented in the article. The author singles out the following stages: incentive-motivational one includes the forming communicative tasks and increases the pupils' level of motivation; content-operational stage aims at presenting and semantization of new lexical items and the use of training exercises; concluding one is focused on using lexical items in pupils' speech. The examples of practical tasks are given for each stage. Linguistic country studies deal with the linguistic units that most clearly reflect the cultural characteristics of the people ? native speakers and their living place. Thereby lingvoregional aspect of sociocultural competence in the English language teaching involves lexical background vocabulary and national realias. It is proved that using linguistic country studying comments intensifies the process of mastering background vocabulary and national realias of English-speaking countries, which are the components of sociocultural competence and provide forming pupils' communicative skills at the elementary level.