POLYCULTURAL APPROACH TO TEACHING ENGLISH UNDER MARTIAL LAW

Abstract

The paper aims at substantiating the theoretical, developing and approbating the method of realization of the polycultural approach of teaching English to the future teachers at the HEIs of Ukraine in the martial law conditions. In doing so, we employed a mixed-methods approach intertwining theoretical analysis of legal and educational literature with empirical tools (questionnaires, diagnostic tests, and a pedagogical experiment). The participants were 320 B2‑level students from four Ukrainian universities, who were assigned to an experimental group (EG, n = 165) and a control group (CG, n = 155). Surveys of intercultural communication readiness, tests on linguistic and cultural knowledge, incomplete‑sentence tasks on practical application skills, and a tolerance index were used to collect data. Subsequently, the data collected were analyzed by comparing the pre- and post-test scores on four facets of polycultural competence – motivational-targeted, cognitive, activity-based, and reflective. The findings indicate a clear advance in the experimental group: the percentage of learners achieving the intermediate level rose from 21.3 % to 31.2 % and that of those achieving the upper‑intermediate level went up from 12.5 % to 27. 3%; on the contrary, no remarkable progress was observed in the control group. In general, this study demonstrates that the incorporation of digital resources, mobile applications, and culturally marked materials in English language teaching promotes the development of polycultural competence, particularly in crisis-affected education settings.