Keywords: information technologies, cultural competence, criteria, foreign language Түйін

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"competence" as the highest level of education. In the English literature, there is a term competence 
(academic, linguistic, cultural, professional competence).
In compliance with the norms of the Russian language recorded in the explanatory dictionaries, 
competence is "a circle of questions about which somebody is knowledgeable "or "a circle of questions, 
phenomena in which this person masters with authoritativeness, knowledge, experience". 
In other words, "competence" and "competency" are two different concepts: competence is a 
phenomenon ("a circle of questions") and competency is a property, quality of a personality. From the 
viewpoint of practical education experience, competency is an ability of a personality to perform any 
activity, any actions. As for the term competence, it is considered as a content of education which is 
acquired by learner, forms his competency in any area of activity. It is possible to say that competence 
is a content of being well-educated. 
M.V. Ryzhakov underlines that "the main idea of competence development consists in that it is not 
necessary to be limited to the sum of knowledge and abilities mastered in a formal education system. To 
reach original efficiency, this knowledge should be linked to a wider range of knowledge acquired by a 
person outside the formal education system " [3].
Competences are formed in the study and in all other kinds of activity. The means of competence 
formation are education, professional training, family upbringing, sociocultural activity which constitute 
the content of continuing education. Thus, competences are knowledge and abilities necessary for 
making decisions in the changing world. The main idea of organizing the training directed on the 
formation of competences consists in integration of various disciplines, allowing avoiding duplication, 
overlapping. In a greater extent, competence meets the requirements of a new paradigm of professional 
education. A question about competence is a question about the education purposes which act as an 
active standard kernel of the education quality and its standards. 
As a result, we have withdrawn the following regularity: there is no competence without knowledge, 
but not any knowledge and not in any situation manifests itself as competence. Competence is shown in 
an ability to accept a correct decision in a concrete situation, activity on the basis of available knowledge.
N. Rozov defines the following aspects of competence:
- a semantic aspect is an adequate judgment of a situation in more general cultural context, that is, in 
a context of available cultural patterns of understanding, relation, assessments of such kind of situations;
- a problem-practical aspect is an adequacy of recognition of situation, an adequate statement and 
effective performance of purposes, tasks, norms in this situation;
- a communicative aspect is an adequate communication in such kind of situations and in an 
occasion of such situations with the account of the corresponding cultural patterns of communication 
and interaction. A person can't possess general cultural competency if he isn't competent (in three above 
mentioned aspects) in situations beyond the scope of his profession. Except that, if problem-practical 
aspect plays a leading (but not only) role in professional competency, semantic and communicative 
aspects play a leading role in general cultural competency [4].
Having identified the essences of the concepts "competency-competence" and the coherence between 
them, we will pass to analyze the structure of the concept of “intercultural competence”. This term began 
to be widely used in the theory of innovative training technologies connected with teaching foreign 
languages. It is certainly an important concept for us since it reflects the final purpose, planned result of 
studying a foreign language.
Intercultural competence has figured very prominently in the debate about global citizenship as a 
graduate attribute for many years. A great deal of research has been undertaken in the field which has led 
to many different definitions and understandings. Given that the Global Perspectives Project supports 
colleagues in their efforts to prepare their students for global citizenship, we would like to propose a 
definition that can inform our debate about internationalizing the curriculum at GCU. 
Relation between language and culture is often described with metaphors: language is the basis of 
culture, the construction material (V.N.Toporov, D.B.Gudkov), culture means, strength of spirit (F. Von 
Humboldt), cultural phenomenon, culture’s appearance, its look (V.A.Maslova), culture’s significance, 
its guarding shelter, factor of development (C.Levi-Strauss), manual to culture (E.Sapir), path that leads 
to culture (A.I.Kuprin).

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Culture can be defined as “the sum of a way of life, including expected behavior, beliefs, values, 
language and living practices shared by members of a society. It consists of both explicit and implicit 
rules through which experience is interpreted” [5]. 
Cultures can be different not only between continents or nations but also within the same company 
and even within the same family. The differences may be ethical, ethnic, geographical, historical, moral, 
political, or religious.
Geert Hofstede, the most famous researcher in the field, refers to culture as a “programming of the 
mind”. 
Cultural competence is the ability to develop targeted knowledge, skills and attitudes that lead to 
visible behavior and communication that are both effective and appropriate in intercultural interactions 
[6].
Cultural competence is the ability of successful communication with people of other cultures. This 
ability can exist in someone at a young age, or may be developed and improved [7]. 
Interactions with people from foreign cultures, a person who is cultural competent understands the 
culture-specific concepts of perception, thinking, feeling, and acting.
Cultural communication and intercultural communicative competence in language teaching Hymes, 
when defining communicative competence, pointed out the lack of consideration for “appropriateness” 
or the sociocultural significance of an utterance in a given context [8]. 
Canale and Swain identified the elements of communicative competence as consisting of linguistic 
competence, discourse competence, strategic competence and sociolinguistic competence [9]. 
Van Ek (1986) added two more components to the above list: sociocultural competence, or the 
ability to function in several cultures, and social competence, meaning familiarity with differences 
in social customs, confidence, empathy and motivation to communicate with others. 9 Intercultural 
communicative competence (ICC) is seen by many language teaching professionals as an extension of 
communicative competence [10]. 
In Beneke’s words “cultural communication in the wider sense of the word involves the use of 
significantly different linguistic codes and contact between people holding significantly different sets of 
values and models of the world … Intercultural competence is to a large extent the ability to cope with 
one’s own cultural background in interaction with others” [11]. 
According to Byram’s well-developed model cultural communicative competence requires certain 
attitudes, knowledge and skills in addition to linguistic, sociolinguistic and discourse competence. The 
attitudes include curiosity and openness as well as readiness to see other cultures and the speaker’s own 
without being judgmental. The required knowledge is “of social groups and their products and practices 
in one’s own and in one’s interlocutor’s country, and of the general processes of societal and individual 
interaction”. Finally, the skills include those of interpreting and relating, discovery and interaction in 
addition to critical cultural awareness/political education [11 p.51]. 
Byram and Fleming claim that someone who has cultural competence “has knowledge of one, or, 
preferably, more cultures and social identities and has the capacity to discover and relate to new people 
from other contexts for which they have not been prepared directly” [13]. 
Fantini describes five constructs that should be developed for successful cultural communication: 
awareness, attitudes, skills, knowledge and language proficiency. Furthermore, he also cites the 
following commonly used attributes to describe the cultural speaker: respect, empathy, flexibility, 
patience, interest, curiosity, openness, motivation, a sense of humour, tolerance for ambiguity, and a 
willingness to suspend judgment. Empathy, not to be confused with sympathy, is viewed as an attitude, 
namely the apprehension of another’s emotional state or condition. It derives from the enhancement of 
the cognitive learning through the affective. It requires understanding, an activity rather than passive 
acceptance. It requires a change in viewpoint which has to be worked towards, engaged with. It is not a 
feeling; it is an ability to participate in a “form of life” [14]. 
In this guide cultural communicative competence (CCC) in general terms will be defined as “the 
ability to communicate effectively in cross-cultural situations and to relate appropriately in a variety 
of cultural contexts” (Bennett and Bennett, 2004; also similarly to Byram, 1997; Byram, Gribkova and 
Starkey, 2002; Corbett, 2003; Moran, 2001; and Samovar and Porter, 1993, among others). 

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For cultural communication courses aiming to develop cultural communicative competence we 
shall use teaching culture through language and teaching language-and-culture interchangeably. These 
courses consciously and systematically incorporate elements of both “big C” and “little c” culture-
general knowledge through culture-specific examples that are not only coming from the target culture(s). 
They emphasise skills development in the areas of observation, interpreting and relating, mediation and 
discovery, as well as attitude formation to increase respect, empathy and tolerance for ambiguity, to 
raise interest in, 10 curiosity about, and openness towards people from other cultures, and to encourage 
a willingness to suspend judgment [15].

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