Paper short abstract:

The research deals with the possible ways of implementation of social networks for developing undergraduate students' communicative competence, which is crucial for a democratic culture. A series of communicative project is described and changes in students' communicative competence are analyzed.

Paper long abstract:

One of the essential elements of a democratic culture is an efficient communication within various contexts, particularly when it comes to the interaction with other cultures and other people. Nowadays SNS provide people with instruments to organize and maintain such communication. Nevertheless, in the educational sphere SNS tends to be used only for the supplementary organizational tool, i.e. in a non-communicative way. However, a communicative way to introduce SNS into the language class can be advocated. This way means the purposeful organization of virtual communication in Japanese within a social network among learners.

The shift from the non-communicative approach to the communicative one in the use of SNS presupposes the shift from regarding the virtual space as storage of information to its view as a field for creative communication. In order to organize such communication with the ultimate goal to foster learners_€ ™ communicative competences we organized a series of communicative projects in Instagram.

The first one was "a communicative album". Students were asked to publish some photos corresponding to a certain topic and then to express their opinion on others' choice in comments under the photo in their profiles. The second one was "a group portfolio of the Japanese language". Students were asked to distribute between themselves small parts of their current language material, e.g. new vocabulary, new grammar or new communicative strategies, and after that to make a publication in their group profile where to explain their part of material to the followers. A communication in Japanese within this public was organized as well. Students themselves made up communicative tasks in their publications for other learners to do in the comments. Thus, by the means of such projects the students' communication competence got furthe r development.

After completing the series of such projects, students were asked to do questionnaires about different aspects of their communicative competence and their attitude to others. The results have shown an increase in their ability to use Japanese for communication and an improvement in their attitudes towards each other which contributes to their democratic conscience.