A cause and direct motive to select and study a certain language are: prevalence of a language in the world; a desire to familiarize with culture, appreciated by the world society, including artistic heritage; linguistic-aesthetic value of a language; possibility to use it in practical activity; one’s ideas on “simplicity/complication” of a language.
Innovativeness and openness are typical characteristics of modern linguistic education that accumulates experience, qualities, possibilities that are presented by methodic of teaching Russian as non-native, new language, and its basic subjects. In their “society” key positions are still occupied by theoretical-applied researches of psychological-pedagogic area and a number of other humanist areas that are no less urgent for dynamic improvement in practice of teaching Russian. Let us study: such contribution to one of the most demanded theoretical-applied field of science, methodic, is made by its key subjects.
Sociology is a subject on society as integral system. Economic and social development of a society significantly defines development of a language and motives of mastering it. Increase in mobility of population, development of the idea of tolerance, mutual understanding and collaboration, trends to overcome prejudices and discrimination have become the leading reasons to study modern languages as new and unknown ones. European Council is developing concept of multilinguality actively. The essence of this concept is not in declared knowledge of several languages, but in increase in number of languages, suggested for mastering, in encouraging an ability to study several languages, thus limiting the dominating role of English in international communication.
At the same time, it is critical for a person not to “keep” new languages and cultures in separation, but to form a multilingual communicative competence, and here one is assisted by the system of formal and informal education.
Regarding to the latter position of choice, we should outline that experts in field of language description construct scales that place languages according to their complication degree. The first place in one of such scales is occupied by Spanish and Italian as most simple ones, the second place belongs to English, French, and German, Russian, as well as Hungarian and Turkish, is placed on the third place, and the forth, most complicated place is given to Arab and hieroglyphic languages (other language hierarchies exist as well, for example, model of Swedish polyglot Eric Gunnemark that evaluates complication of languages from the position of bearer of Sweden [Art of studying languages, 2002]).
Let us underline that data of sociology isn’t used directly in methodic, particularly, it is studied through sociolinguistic that studies problems in complex: for example, mechanisms of influencing language by social factors, part that is played by language in life of society, special features of language culture. Sociolinguistic also investigates reasons of loss, damage, alteration of a language under the influence of another one (attrition) at individual and social levels. It has been established that the following reasons can result in the mentioned “distortions”:
– insufficient volume of a speaker's memory; role and functions of native and non-native languages in society; their social status;
– degree of language civilization or acculturation: its facilitation in mass media, prospects of its implementation in education, business, possibilities to gain profit from knowledge of a language;
– distance between a speaker and initial environment of a language;
– cultural prestige or deficit of using language in international scale, etc.
Let us list some mistakes that reflect trends to losing one's native language: a) lexical replacements (a successful person); b) expansions (We had a walk in trees. TREES begin to indicate FOREST, PARK, GARDEN, etc.); c) contraction (usage of word friend implying female friend in case the latter implies “a woman in civil marriage”); d) generalization (I read many of book's pages. Transiting expression of belonging into passive constructions); e) simplifications (Whatever a baby cries); f) false rejection of exceptions (Ja shela instead of Ja shla -impossible to translate-); f) structural replacements (It was I, who finished first) etc. [Protasova. 89-90].
Studying a non-native language always draws attention to gender side of Russian language. There are not many of such works, but, for example, E.A. Zemskaya outlines that differences between male and female speech are notices on phonetic level while a person expresses emotions in stretching vowels that is typical for women, duplicates consonants that is used among men (c-come on!); plentifulness of diminutive-hypocoristic words and adjectives in diminutive form.
Sensual “universum” of modern Russian language is mostly formed under the influence of not only self-realization (mentality) of Russian people, but also social factors. Researches testify for prevalence of 4 tendencies in speech usage: expression of emotions, anti-rationality, tendency towards passiveness and fatalism, love to morality (A. Vezhbitskaya). Thus, while emotions are mostly expressed by adjectives in English, they are expressed through verbs in Russian (miss someone, etc.); irrationality is expressed in wide usage of impersonal constructions, adjective “perhaps”, etc. Russian language expresses moral justifications in a wider specter (noble, wonderful, etc).
Detailed researches in this area allow us to make certain conclusions that are critical for teaching foreign languages. For example, cultural features of a specific language are not mostly related to general-human characteristics, but special features of a nation's life. Thus, the word sun carries negative connotations for Middle-Asian nations (contrary to positive Russian expression my little sun), and word moon as a symbol of coolness contains a positive meaning - “something kind, nice, and beautiful” (women in Middle-Asian poetry are described as moon-faced, moonlike). While staging the tale by I.A. Krylov “A wolf and a lamb”, Kazakh children prefer to perform part of the wolf, as wolf is a traditionally positive symbol among Turk nations. Cultural synonyms that have connotations (esquire – landowner, samurai – knight), forms and means of expressing verbal etiquette (you in English and a whole system of linguistic units and grammatical forms of addressing a person in Japanese, Korean; official, informal, neutral, male among friends, simple female, bookish, etc.), cultural connotations, words with no direct equivalents in other languages – these are all phenomenons, description and systematization of which from the position of linguistic culturology can allow one to form intercultural competence from the point of cultural contest of his native language and in comparison between his native and foreign cultures.
Sociology, social linguistic, linguistic culturology, and methodic of teaching a foreign language are united by one of urgent problems of a modern society – the problem of acculturation of a person – process of borrowing components of foreign culture by a person who grew up in a certain cultural environment, subcultures (totality of norms, values, stereotypes of age and social groups of population, informal unities and movements), world outlooks (totality of knowledge and skills of a subject on actual and imagined reality that are formed by a language and means of linguistic nomination), precedent texts (quotes, references, allusions, etc.) are understandable for all speakers of a given language or culture; “precedency” of a text points to the fact it is included into speech practice, the ‘list” of texts that are typical for literature background of an “average” speaker, and it is regularly referred to in a direct of indirect form [Y.N. Karaulov].
Indulgent attitude of state and society to the problem of acculturation of new citizens can result in ethnopsychological gap between people who live in one country.
Communicative adaptation of people in a new society has not always testified for spiritual and moral adaptation to a new culture. Linguistic-didactic solution of this problem consists in developing a methodic of linguistic training for children and adults according to linguistic-culturological approach towards the problem of linguistic socialization of new citizens.
Linguistic, being a basic science for methodic of teaching a foreign language, studies general laws of constructing and functioning of human language. Linguistic composition of studying a foreign language is realized in aspects of language (phonetics, graphic and orthography, lexis, grammatics), structures and genres of speech (verbal dialogue, verbal or typed monologue, discussion).
Various directions that present a certain interest for methodic, have obtained an independent status in modern linguistic. Communicative linguistic studies speech aspects (speech acts that possess the following characteristics: purposefulness, controllability via rules of speech behavior, addressness, emergence in a specific speech situation) as units of communication.
Pragmatic side of speech act that forms modal frame of a statement, is formed of the following components: 1) intention of speech (intention of a speaker to express a specific communicative sense via verbal means, can be statement-forming, or leading to a communicative result with one statement: promise, gratitude, apology, or text-forming, leading to a result through a line of statements within a dialogue, argument, or reasoning monologue, description); 2) objective of a statement; 3) participants of speech process; 4) setting of communication. Methodic that teaches verbal communication in foreign language, typically divides speech acts into: 1) informative; 2) motivational; 3) modal or obligatory; 4) contact-setting that establish performances, support, termination of speech contact, formulas of social etiquette refer to this group; 5) evaluative that express emotional reaction to a situation or addressing.
Communicative linguistic studies communicative significance of structural elements of speech acts (words, word combinations, sentences) that is expressed in a discourse (discourse – Fr. discourse speech – connected text, in other words, while a text represents mostly abstract, formal construction, discourse is a certain form of actualizing a text, taken in a real situation; discourse includes verbal and non-verbal elements).
The following ideas of communicative linguistic are considered as most significant ones for the methodic:
– speech acts are studied as units of communication and training;
– speech intention of a speaker serves as a criterion of selecting speech acts, it regulates speech behavior and organizes its contents;
– mastering a language implies formation of communicative competence among students;
– forming communicative competence takes place in the selected situations of communications that serve as a stimulus for emergence of speech intention and realization of a speech act.
The following elements are linked to methodic of teaching a foreign language: contrastive linguistic that studies two or more languages in comparison between their structures revealing their common features and differences, linguistic of text studies legislations of constructing a connected text and contents of a text that establish communication. Describing different genres and types of text (narrative, description, reasoning) with outlining so-called foreign types that have a clear composition, and also non-constructed, adapted, and unadapted.
Modern methodic of teaching a language, native or foreign, uses a rich baggage of rhetoric – the science of the art of speech and oratory. Rhetoric generalizes the experience of masters of word, sets rules of speech behavior, defines ways to optimize oral communication. A person who studies a new language, should know certain information on means of forming connected speech, stylistic and rhetorical speech tools. Thus, “inaccuracy” in diction (Rus. pod arku – podarku, cheloveck – [check], [de'ushka] can be understood as both devushka and dedushka). In order to train one's organs of articulation, tongue twisters and specking “with pebble” in the mouth is used. Intonation, melody of speech, its volume, phase accentuation, etc. are all means that express communicative intentions. People often trust these means more than words. Abul-Farage (XIII century) wrote: “One, who speaks lowering his voice steadily, is, no doubt, sad about something; one, who speaks in a weak voice, is shy like a lamb; one, who speaks loudly and incoherently, is stupid as a goat.”.
Perfection of speech is proved not only by its phonetic and grammatical correctness, but also its lexical diversity. One, who studies a new language, tries to use and acknowledge synonyms, antonyms, paronyms, but rarely points out context transposabilty of these means. It is hard to speak of mastering a language if a student doesn't know and has not met means of “coloring” speech, for example chiasmuses – expressions that place the second part in an indirect order. A chiasmus by Socrates “We eat to live, but we don’t live to eat” allows us to construct other bright expressions according to this scheme. Oxymorons as combinations of incongruous elements (“a bad good person”, A, Chekhov; “I love luxuriant withering of nature”, A.Pushkin), linguistic paradox, puns are also interesting. These and many other elements should become a postponed, but not forgotten perspective for a learner of foreign language.
It has been established that up to 55% of total oral sense information can be transferred through paralinguistic means [A. Piz]: intonation, gesticulation, mimicry. Studying non-verbal means of speech communication is referred to a specific division of linguistic – paralinguistic, and speech loading testifies for a necessity to possess there means. Studying paralinguistic means implies a number of stages:
Selection of frequency, commonly-used non-verbal means of communication in native language and comparing them to non-verbal means of a new, foreign language;
Conscious imitation of non-verbal means of the studied language;
Activation and facilitation in speech.
Definite standards of body motions and norms that they should correspond to are developed in linguistic culturology and paralinguistic. These norms imply: correspondence to a given situation,; moderate, not distracting variety; physical coordination of gestures, mimicry, body motions; verbal coordination of the latter listed elements, synchronization with words, that are strengthened with them; dynamics, spontaneity, naturalness.
Some non-verbal means of communication, for example, distance, should also be considered. A. Piz outlines 4 spatial areas in communication: 1) intimate (15-46 cm) – for people in close emotional contact: children, relatives, close friends; 2) personal (4cm – 1,2 m) – communication space for friendly meetings, official receptions; 3) social (1,2m – 3,6m) – distance of communicating with strangers, new employees; 4) public (over 3,6m) – distance of communicating with a group of people, audience.
Comparative analysis of non-verbal means in different languages is interesting for the methodic, besides, their traditions and customs differ frequently. Thus, a gesture, shown in Russian in case of loss or failure, demonstrates pleasure and success in Croatia. If one spins his index finger in front of Dutch person, he will face an opposite effect: someone said a very witty phrase. Laughter is not a sign of fun for people in Africa, but an indication of confusion. It doesn’t matter for the European what hand they are given a book with: left or right. In Middle East, where left hand is considered unclean, will take neither money, nor present, and feel insulted.
In late 80ies a transition of scientific and practical interests towards culture took place. A new direction in teaching languages was defined as culture-objective, language – means in works by Y.N. Karaulov “Russian language and linguistic person” (1987), V.V. Vorobiev “Linguistic culturology (theory and methods)” (1997), E.I. Passov “Communicative foreign language study: conception of developing individuality in dialogue between cultures” (2000).
Linguistic culturology is a scientific discipline of a synthesizing type as it is placed in a circle of adjoining sciences: social linguistic, ethic linguistic, psycholinguictics, country-specific study, culturology. It has selected interaction and mutual influence between culture and language as an object of their functioning. General direction of linguistic-culturological researches is human as a linguistic person, language as a system of realizing cultural values, culture as the highest level of language, speech behavior, speech etiquette, text as the most important unit of a language.
Thus, methodic has obtained waypoints that allow one to construct teaching as a dialogue of cultures, though comparing facts from the area of art and way of life of language speakers. Moral reference points in life of nations, society, and the existing differences between them are considered with an educational purpose. It is important in terms of forming a stable motivation to study a new language and new culture in dialogue with one’s native one.
Intercultural communication in teaching bilingual children in Russian. Unlike adults who have life experience in adapting to new social-cultural conditions, children have certain complications while studying elements of culture. But, it is impossible to master a vocabulary that proves one’s real speech practice in the country of a new language without familiarizing with culture.
If under “childlike” mastering culture we understand not only reading poems ans singing songs wearing national costumes, etc., but also mastering means of reasoning, types of personal relations, ways to express friendship, sympathy, that are linked to speech behavior of a person, it requires specially-organized work among children, pedagogues, and tutors.
Elements of Russian culture should be organically included into diverse traditional measures of preschool and school institution, thus enriching them with communicative and emotional contents.
Mastering a new language, values, household settings is provided by traditions, linked to a yearly circle: national social, confessional holidays, customs that demonstrate a new culture (singing and games in a circle, round dance, stories on customs and drawing elements of a story, sculpture, preparing simple recipes, etc.).
Learning poems by heart has a special significance. Even if not everything is clear in a poem, children are always proud to tell something “long” in a new language. It is a reason of self-affirmation. It is important that selection of poems, songs should correspond to everyday situations. Pedagogic uniqueness of poems is defined by the fact they stimulate an interest towards rhythm, temper, intonation, and helps a student to find new information especially in case training is linked to an active game, accompanied by music, and has a plot.
We can suggest the following order of working a text: a) a pedagogue, tutor reads a text, poem, comments it and translates contents; b) students repeat it in chorus and individually; c) text is played in parts, accompanied with motion; d) text are put down into an illustrated card, it helps a student to guess a text and retell it, etc.
Fairy tales and theatre (shadow, finger, puppet, magnet, or drawn type of it) provide for a tolerant mastering of Russian literature.
Pedagogues and tutors should realize that results of their activity are defined by themselves, their creative and patient attitude towards uniqueness of children development. They must know how to analyze demands of small students, level of their speech formation; have knowledge on all cultures, involved into the educational process, be able to correspond their acts with other pedagogues and parents.
Sciences that supply methodic of teaching Russian as a foreign language with information on stages of forming knowledge, skills, individual psychological features of students are: psychology, pedagogic psychology, particularly psychology of training, scientific-applicatory objectives of these branches of science are linked to studying the process of forming socially-significant features of a person, basic features of morality; psychology of training: this branch of science concentrates on studying process of mastering knowledge, formation of skills. Social psychology and its branches (psychology of nations, psychology of family, group) study psychic phenomenons that refer to a certain group of people or a person within a group; psychological compatibility, communicative abilities, linked to a need for communication, setting for communication, way one feels in communication. Experimental psychology enriches methodic with data on memory volume, legislations of free and conditioned memorizing, features of perception, etc. Psychosemantics studies various forms of indexes within individual consciousness (pictures, symbols, verbal forms, etc.). Psychology of a person and its branches (age psychology, differential psychology, defectopsychology) are used in methodic during explanation of means of individualizing training and constructing various models of training considering age features of students. Ethnic psychology studies nationally-defined nature of psychic.
Thus, it has been established that uniqueness of psychic of the Japanese is defined by historical isolation, over-population of Japan. Being
concentrated in mass agglomerations in big cities, the Japanese have developed complex social-psychological skills that resulted in emergence of such phenomenon as “web-society”. It is a society, all members of which are linked in a strict hierarchy of moral and social obligations in both vertical and horizontal direction. Ethno-psychological features of the Japanese do not allow them to initiate a conversation, rush with making decisions that are discussed in a collective and delayed manner. In learning, including languages, the Japanese value moral and ethnic basic features, for example, they prefer description of nature and historical places to plot texts.
Non-linear thinking is typical for representatives of South-East Asia (linear thinking is related to making decisions “quickly”) as well as “round way” of making decisions after a careful analysis.
Psychology provides methodic with the most valuable information on memory that is one of the most necessary conditions of mastering a language, psychological or personal development of a man. As it is known, memory can carry out conflicting functions: remembering and reproducing on the one hand, and forgetting - on the other hand. It has been registered that forgetting process begins straight after apprehending educational material and, if it is not supported by reproduction, only 25% of the information remains memorized 5 days later. Remembering can prove successful in case a new material is included into the system of conscious relations, and if a person sets an objective for himself to memorize certain information (free memorizing) and facilitates such methods as composing a plan and grouping material.
While studying a foreign language one should develop and use various types of memory. Depending on what is memorized and reproduced and how it is done, memory is divided into motoric (memory for moves and acts), figurative (memory for visual and acoustic images), word-logical (memory for ideas), and emotional (memory for feelings). Memory types should always be used in education according to their period of action: instant (acts at the moment of apprehending information), short-term (information of volume 7 +/- 2 units remains memorized for 30 seconds), operative (able to store information until the set objective is solved; acts if setting for memorizing is active, period of action varies from several minutes to several days), long-term (characterized by a great volume, for many years of the whole lifetime of a person it can store sensual interpretation of a statement), genetic (transits experience, emotions, associations through generations).
Psychology provide a foreign language tutor with information on individual-personal features of students, and it allows him refer the latter to either communicative type (extraverts who get involved into communication easily and tend to participate in group activities, collective work, take part in role games, are able use prediction and linguistic guess in learning process) or non-communicative type (introverts who tend to analyze linguistic material, learn rules consciously, unwillingly get involved into communication also because they are afraid to make a mistake, prefer reading, writing activities, explanation over speech practice).
Age psychology and its rich specter of branches – from infant psychology to psychology of the elderly (gerontopsychology) that study age features of psychic processes, comprehension of knowledge, age factors of personal development, assist methodic of teaching a foreign language to define contents, methods, means of work with consideration of students’ age. Its recommendations are used in organizing linguistic education for persons of so-called third age in Japan. The researches, carried out within this branch of science, prove that verbal functions of a person progress in the most intensive manner and achieve their highest level after 40-45 years of age. D. Peltz, F. Andrews have discovered peaks of the highest intellectual achievements at age of 47 and older.
Regarding the process of verbal communication between an adult and a child in foreign language, psychologists suggest the following sequence of involving a child into verbal interaction: stage of listening and familiarizing, then comprehending and repeating spontaneously, the next stage implies reproducing words in a repeated situation, (generalization of a word usage), repeating after an adult in order of question-answer, independent repetition of words and word combinations, varying and combining them, selection of a word form, independent construction of sentences. Thus, communication development takes place among children in result of generalization, approbation, and inspection of communication laws, revealed by a child. It has been established that children rarely fail when they identify a color, because this component of education can be imagined and compared to their native language easily. Children experience less trouble when they answer alternative questions, make up synonyms, antonyms, word variations with diminutive or augmentative suffix, etc.
Psycholinguistics is a relatively new scientific discipline that steadily draws more interest towards itself nowadays. It formation as an independent science in Russia is related to the following scientists: A.A. Leontiev [Psycholinguistic, 1967], A.R. Lurin, I.A. Zimniaya, and others. Views of Russian and foreign scientists [C. Osgood, J. Miller] regarding the complex structure of relations between language and consciousness, speech and thinking are important for the methodic. It is well known that brain is the organ of thinking. Left, or speech hemisphere, is responsible for speech, its connectivity, abstract and logical thinking, comprehension of abstract lexis, it manages the right hand. This verbal hemisphere always dominates. It “establishes” energetics, enthusiasm, optimism of a person. The right hemisphere is related to imaginative thinking and objective meaning of words .This hemisphere is non-verbal and responsible for apprehension of space, manages gestures. It is a source of intuition, allows one to distinguish people’s voices, gender of speakers, melody, rhythm, accents in words and sentences, it is “pessimistic”. This data plays an important part in defining personal type of a student and influence efficiency of the process of mastering a foreign language. Apart from the types, described above – introvert and extravert, there is also a typology that considers one’s typical method of making conclusions: deductive (from general to specific) and inductive (from specific to general); inert (defined by a conscious approach towards learning, free attention, analysis of material) and labile (corresponds to intuitive-sensitive way of thinking, unconsciousness, usage of free attention, general comprehension of a given material). Data of psycholinguistics allow one to solve the problem of cognitive ways of mastering a foreign language in a scientific fasion.
The work is submitted to the International Scientific Conference «Priority directions of development of science, technologies and equipment», Italy, April 12-19, 2014, came to the editorial office оn 19.03.2014
Библиографическая ссылка
Balykhina T.M. Scientific theories and practice of communicative adaptation to a new linguistic environment and educational space // Международный журнал экспериментального образования. – 2014. – № 6. – С. 44-49;URL: https://expeducation.ru/ru/article/view?id=5847 (дата обращения: 27.09.2024).