Developing Master’s Degree Students’ Narrative Skills in the Context of Foreign Language Intercultural Communication

The article addresses the issue of developing narrative skills of Master’s degree students as an essential component of foreign language intercultural communication. The relevance of the study is determined by the intensification of Ukraine’s intercultural contacts under contemporary sociocultural and wartime conditions, which place new demands on the professional training of future foreign language teachers. The authors substantiate the assumption that effective intercultural dialogue cannot be achieved without well-developed narrative skills, as these skills enable speakers to interpret events, convey personal experience, emotions and value orientations while taking into account the sociocultural specificity of communication partners.

The article synthesizes national and international scholarly approaches to defining the concept of narrative and identifies its key characteristics, functions and structural components. The authors present the results of a pedagogical study conducted within the course Teaching Language and Culture at Zhytomyr Ivan Franko State University. The research was implemented in five stages (preparatory, introductory, professionally oriented, operational-practical, and creative) and involved the use of authentic video narratives, analytical tasks, role-play activities, group work, and direct intercultural interaction with native speakers.

The empirical findings demonstrate a positive dynamics in the development of students’ narrative skills. The results of a post-training questionnaire survey confirmed that students became aware of the narrative as a cultural phenomenon and clearly distinguished it from other types of oral productive speech and feel more confident producing their personal narratives in intercultural communication. The authors outline prospects for further research, which include the selection of authentic materials and the development of a methodology for forming narrative skills of senior secondary school students.