Foreign Culture

The education system plays crucial roles in the development of nations and societies. Curriculum development is a key component of the education process which involves alignment with the goals and objectives of teaching English as a foreign or second language in a particular context. The present article provides a personal narrative about the experience of developing an English language curriculum in the school-based Saudi Arabian context. The narrative represents a teacher's voice during a curriculum development process, and also examines the discussion of different voices represented by teachers and decision makers during several workshops held to discuss the integration of cultural aspects into English textbooks. The narrative points out that the majority of teachers and decision makers were reluctant to incorporate foreign culture for several reasons, such as geopolitically sensitive contexts of the foreign culture. Other teachers were afraid of the impact of foreign culture on their own. The narrative calls for better inclusion of appropriate cultural aspects in order to enhance the students' cultural competence so that they can interact effectively with people of different cultures.

Introduction. Analysis of teaching ESP (English for specific purposes) to university students of science shows that the competence-based approach requires further improvement of teaching methods and educational models to meet modern requirements. The authors propose to adapt the well-known theory of second language identity formation by I. I. Haleeva for the graded formation of professional second language identity which lays the foundations for a life-long improvement of professional foreign language communication skills. The core of this process is mastering of foreign language professional terminology that is why the authors chose thesaurus modelling as the starting point to build an up-to-date model for teaching ESP to students whose major is Automobile Industry.
Research methods. Apart from analysis of academic sources and generalization of the obtained results, the authors employed modelling to build the educational model for implementation of video podcasts as thesaurus-based didactic tools into teaching ESP.
Results and Discussion. The choice of video podcast as a didactic tool is discussed because the implementation of video podcasts into teaching ESP is not sufficiently developed. Then proposed model is based on psychological-pedagogical, content and activity-based, and effective-reflexive components, and the concept of the professional second language identity formation is found within the content and activity-based component which is justified by the essence of the concept itself. Finally, to achieve the aim of the study the authors present the graded scheme of using a video podcast as a didactic thesaurus-based tool for the professional second language identity formation.
Conclusion. The authors highlight the advantages of the proposed model which is the contribution for making the educational process clear and focused on specific results. The conclusion about its versatility opens the prospects for further research.