ИСТИНА

At present, it has been widely recognized that language and culture are interrelated. Language is considered to be the most powerful tool to express and convey culture. At the same time, culture cannot be fully understood without its linguistic forms and patterns. When teaching a foreign language, culture should be equally taken into account with the same level of importance. Undoubtedly, language knowledge and cultural awareness enhance communication and unite people in our global world of increased regional diversity and multicultural emphasis in society. This concept has become the key element of teaching foreign languages and cultures at Lomonosov Moscow State University. The program of teaching foreign languages consists of culture-based activities that provide students with all necessary information about their target culture. It includes national history and geography, religion, socio-political institutions, economic system, education, public events, cultural traditions, mass media, arts, regional diversity and etc. To cover all these aspects of the target culture, modern tools of interactive teaching based on up-to-date authentic materials have been applied. These tools are aimed to develop new skills and techniques to help students get, process and use new information themselves. The students get involved in socio-political discussions and debates; take part in case-studies and brainstorming, give presentations and interviews, make speeches and reports, play different games and go on excursions, and etc. Systematic practice of all these activities in the classroom has proved to be quite successful. A number of particular tools of teaching foreign languages and cultures will be presented in detail (e.g., joint projects of Moscow University and Moscow Kremlin museums; socio-political discussions and debates).