Developing Linguocultural Competence Through Contemporary Kazakhstani Literary Fairy Tales: An Experimental Study with University Students

Abstract

This article examines whether working with contemporary Kazakhstani original fairy tales helps to develop students’ linguistic and cultural competence. The study featured a quasi-experimental design that included pre- and post-tests and a control group. n=120 students from the ‘Training Teachers of Russian Language and Literature’ program across three years of study took part: n=59 in the experimental group and n=61 in the control group. Researchers measured competence across five components: cultural realities and culturally marked vocabulary, phraseology, cultural occurrences, cultural connotations, and pragmatic and behavioral norms. Using a 40-mark test based on a corpus of fairy tales, the authors developed and carried out the assessment. The experimental group followed a cycle of text-based activities, whilst the control group studied the same topics for the same number of hours using standard teaching materials. Student’s t-test for independent and dependent samples, the Mann–Whitney and Wilcoxon tests were applied, and effect sizes were calculated. The improvement in the experimental group significantly exceeded that in the control group (d = 1.28; p < 0.001); no changes were observed in the control group. This advantage was maintained across all five components and all three courses. However, it was expressed to varying degrees: it was strongest with respect to precedent phenomena and weakest with respect to behavioral norms. The data obtained allow us to consider contemporary national literature as a resource for developing the cultural literacy of future teachers.