On June 7-8, the Department of French Philology of the VSU held the III scientific and practical seminar for teachers of the French language "Taking into account students’ identity during a foreign language lesson and fostering intercultural competence."

The seminar was held as part of the Erasmus + project (Jean Monnet Module) 564786-EPP -1-2015-1-EN-EPPJMO-MODULE "European identity through the prism of the policy of the European Union" (Identity européenne à travers la politique de l’Union Européenne (politique linguistique, d’affaires, d’immigration) - PolidEU), which is being implemented at the department since 2015.

14 teachers from secondary general education schools and gymnasiums of Voronezh and Voronezh region (Liski, Kalach, Anna, Ramon) took part in the seminar.

On June 7, at the opening of the seminar, the head of the International Cooperation Service Oleg Belenov greeted the participants with a welcoming speech. He pointed out the importance of contacts between the school and the university in order to assure a high level of knowledge of the entrants and said that the VSU is always open for proposals of new formats of cooperation from schools.

The seminar was opened by Elena Alekseeva, the head of the project PolidEU, the head of the department of French philology. She thanked all the teachers who had responded to the invitation to participate in the seminar, and stressed the uniqueness of such a platform for the exchange of experience.

Then a member of the work group of the project PolidEU, associate professor of the French philology department Svetlana Buryakova presented to the audience a report on the implementation of the methodical component of the PolidEU project for three years, in which she talked about the main forms of work within the framework of the project and their effectiveness in forming the competencies of the Federal State Educational Standard of the Russian Federation.

Then the 3d and 4th year students Natalia Mishchenko, Yulia Makarova and Daria Saharova, winners of the language teaching skills competition conducted by the French Philology Department in the framework of the PolidEU project and the French Embassy in Russia presented their lesson plans aimed at fostering intercultural competence.

The first working day was closed with the presentation of the latest course books of the French publishers Didier and Hachette. The meeting in the format of a webinar took place in the assembly hall of the Regional library. named after I.S. Nikitin and was organised by the shop of educational literature in foreign languages Picadilly (director Marina Vatutina).

On June 8 the work of the seminar had a practical focus. The working day began with a three-hour consultation with Alla Shcherbakova, the Deputy Chairman of the Subject Commission of the Unified State Exam on the French language, the Associate Professor of the Department of French Philology. Under her leadership, participants mastered the technology of assessing the intercultural, socio-cultural and linguistic competence of students using the exam materials.

Then Svetlana Buryakova told the participants about the possibilities of using Internet resources for fostering the intercultural competence. The seminar ended with the practical work of the participants, who made a methodical description of the Internet resource in the aspect of forming intercultural competence and developed a series of exercises with its use.

In conclusion, all the teachers were presented with certificates of seminar participants and kits, which included CDs with all the books piblished in the framework of the PolidEU project, a report booklet and a printed version of the collection of articles " Taking into account students’ identity during a foreign language lesson and fostering intercultural competence".

The work group of the PolidEU project expresses gratitude to all teachers for active participation in the project.