French youth sociolect as a means of improving foreign language communicative competence of university students

The article examines the issue of improving the foreign-language communicative competence of university students through the study of modern colloquial speech of the French youth. Due to its dynamic development and active replenishment, the youth sociolect is an important and promising cultural and sociolinguistic resource for teaching a foreign language. The author analyzes the communication style and the main features of youth communication, which are characteristic of the youth speech, phonetic, grammatical and lexical expressive means. The main ways of replenishing the vocabulary of the youth language and examples of use are also provided. It is emphasized that the youth sociolect is saturated with emotionally colored vocabulary of a reduced level and includes argotisms, verlanized words, alphanumeric coding, borrowings. The specificity of the youth vocabulary determines the complexity of perception and understanding of foreign speech, complicates speech behavior and communication. The researcher concludes that it is necessary to turn to a comprehensive consideration of the youth sociolect in the process of studying a foreign language in order not only to view youth speech as a form of language existence, but also to analyze the linguistic trends occurring in the sphere of the national French language and determining its further development and functioning. It is noted that the inclusion of tasks using youth vocabulary in the educational process contributes to the development of students’ socio-cultural competence. The material has to be carefully prepared, linguistic and cultural realities have to be studied along with the analysis and discussion of complex units of speech and expressions, appreciation of the communicative situation and social status of the participants in communication, and comparison of the national-cultural and social specifics of their country and the country of the language studied.