BOARD GAME AS A MEANS OF DEVELOPING INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

The paper analyzes the project-based method as a means of developing the intercultural competence of university students in the course of learning a foreign language. The application of this method is caused by the high requirements of the university academic programs and the necessity to search for pedagogical technologies, methods, and approaches that contribute to the imitation of real communication situations in the course of studying a foreign language by students of non-linguistic specialties. The author describes the project-based method as an approach in teaching undergraduates of the academic program “Advertising and public relations” to make a creative project. The paper presents the results of a survey regarding the students’ preferences in the forms of educational activities used in class; describes the students’ experience in creating a board game as a creative project for the Foreign Language course. The stages of the project activity - preparatory, technological, and final - are described in detail, the meaning of each stage is explained, a detailed description of the exercises used at all stages is given. The author paid particular attention to the criteria for evaluating the project activities. The paper presents the results of monitoring that identifies the level of students' proficiency in lexical, cultural, and historical material on the given topic before and after the implementation of the project-based method. The author underlines the potential of the project-based technique in enhancing the existing intercultural awareness and cognitive interest of the students, improving their skills of learning new information as well as lexical, cultural, and historical material.