The role of proverbs in the improvement of students’ foreign language communicative skills

Abstract

The article focuses on the role of proverbs as the source of folk wisdom, means of expressing national character and culture specificity; and also peculiarities of their use at foreign language classes. In the research paper proverbs are presented as the language awareness product, which reflects people’s historical life experience, traditions and culture; the analysis of essence, content and structure of proverbs has been done, characterizing their expressiveness and brevity, which enable to reveal specifics of people mentality, their mind and identity. Special attention is paid to the use of proverbs at foreign language classes for improvement of learners’ intercultural and socio cultural knowledge; familiarizing them with the culture of the studied language; development of students’ foreign language communicative skills and habits, that are important for their intercultural communication with native speakers of the studied foreign language. Examples of language and speech activities on the use of proverbs, directed to the enhancement of learners’ communicative skills in different aspects of the language, the role of proverbs in the development of students’ oral and written foreign language communication are given in the article.