FORMING ACADEMIC LITERACY: STUDENT CONFERENCE ON INTERCULTURAL TOPICS IN FRENCH AS SECOND FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Student conference in a language studied as a second foreign one is aimed at developing students' creative abilities, skills of selection, analysis, critical understanding of information and its presentation to an unfamiliar audience. In a distance learning environment, the conference provides psychological support, bringing diversity to the learning process and providing psychological assistance to students. The purpose of the study is to consider the impact of student research conference on intercultural topics in academic literacy when learning a second foreign language. Objectives: 1. To consider the content, methods of organization, methodological aspects of the student research conference within the project methodology; 2. To identify criteria for selecting topics for student reports; 3. To highlight the tasks of teachers in the project; 4. To analyze the types of students' activities preparing and making reports; 5. To monitor the impact of the conference on the formation of academic literacy and scientific competence to improve learning. In the process of description and analysis of materials and ways of organizing a student conference on intercultural topics in a foreign language the procedures of descriptive, interpretive, linguistic, cultural and comparative research methods were used. Results. Our project conception consists of seven stages. It has been shown on the example of the Interuniversity Scientific and Practical Student Conference “Russia - France in the mirror of history, culture, politics” was held in May 2020 in a remote form on-line. The analysis of some reports has been given, such as the case of a Maquisar Battalion and their banner: in March 2011 the son of the battalion commander recognized it in the Internet, came to Moscow to give documents and photos; in 2014, a book about the battalion was published in France. Practical use of the results has been monitored. The whole conference was recorded on Skype (2 hours 30 minutes), copied and discussed by students. Discussion. Preparing cross-cultural topic is an important part of the overall professional competence and has a self-educational function providing desire to continue this type of extracurricular work, despite the fact that it requires a lot of effort and time.