DOMESTIC TRADITION OF DESIGNING CULTURE-CENTRED ENGLISH TEXT-BOOK: SOVIET PERIOD EXPERIENCE

Abstract

The article deals with the problem of including culture-focused knowledge and skills of social communication into the Soviet school text-books for learning English (1930–1980). The problem has been analyzed with the aim to investigate the dynamics of the development of the country-study component of the English school text-books. Several periods of this development have been singled out: the 1930s-fi rst half of the1950s – as a period of «sovietisation» of the text-books’ content and raising the ideological perspective of the country-study material; second half of the 1950–1960 – as a period of growing interest towards the English-native countries and of incorporating a series of novelties into the cultural component of the text-books; the 1970–1980 – as a period of rapid development of the cultural component in the context of the theory of lingual country-study by Vereschagin and Kostomarov. Peculiarities of every period have been distinguished.