Information and communication technologies and the formation of cross-cultural communication skills in a foreign language environment

The article discusses the various possibilities of using ICTs in teaching Russian as a foreign language at the University of Pisa and the methods of working with a modern virtual educational environment. A brief description of the modern educational environment (and, more broadly, ecosystem) that has developed under the influence of informatization, computerization and digitalization of society in the late XX — early XXI centuries is proposed. The paper also focuses on the ways in which the Blended learning approach as an integration of classroom and online learning is put in practice by using the E-learning system and Moodle tools. Particular attention is paid to the methodology of working with the multimedia corpus of the Russian language MURCO in teaching grammar. In particular, it is demonstrated that the use of the corpus allows developing pragmatic language competence and mastering adaptation mechanisms for the adequate implementation of communicative intentions within any social scenario. In language teaching, the recognition of the need to study pragmatics using corpus data is due to the fact that the design of the verbal-semantic and linguo-cognitive levels of the secondary language personality is not enough to form a stable communicative skill. Reaching the third and the highest, i.e. pragmatic level of functioning of the secondary language personality, which allows to realize communicative-activity needs, is impossible without immersion in the environment (which can be artificially recreated) of the language being studied. In particular, it will be demonstrated how the analysis of micro-dialogs from the MURCO corpus, illustrating imperative speech acts, allows not only to describe the elements of the “expanded” semantics of the imperative mood in the Russian language, but also to reveal the socio-pragmatic factors of its use.