Under the conditions of rapidly accelerating digital transformation and the intensification of migration processes in 2024–2025, foreign language education is undergoing not merely an evolution but a qualitative paradigm shift: from the dominance of a narrowly understood communicative competence to the priority of comprehensive intercultural and existential literacy. In this study, the method of creative interpretation of stage-by-stage learning (МТИПО) is theoretically substantiated and empirically tested; it represents an integrative model for mastering language, speech patterns, cultural codes, and folk traditions in their mutual interdependence. In contrast to classical linguodidactic approaches, which often artificially separate linguistic and cultural components, the proposed model interprets folklore and tradition not as a set of fixed knowledge to be mechanically assimilated, but as a dynamic, open semantic field that serves as material for creative transformation and personal appropriation by learners. Within the framework of the study, a three-component stage-by-stage learning model was implemented: a perceptive-cognitive stage, at which culturally significant meanings of folklore texts and practices are decoded; a reproductive-reconstructive stage, which presupposes the internalization of typical speech and behavioural patterns; a stage of creative interpretation, associated with the construction of new cultural artefacts through digital storytelling and the use of generative AI technologies. The data obtained on the basis of standardized language competence tests, the Cultural Intelligence Scale (CQS), and qualitative analysis of digital projects demonstrate a statistically significant advantage of the experimental group. This confirms the hypothesis that the creative interpretation of traditions, in their conjunction with the contemporary technological context, contributes to a deep integration of the learner’s linguistic and cultural identity, making the process of foreign language education existentially meaningful and sustainable.

creative interpretation, stage-by-stage learning, ethnopedagogy, intercultural communicative competence, folklore, digital storytelling, generative AI in education, cultural intelligence

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