Museum cultural space and multimedia in teaching foreign languages

Grigorieva Y., Nesterova A.

North Eastern Federal University, Yakutsk, Russia

The specificity of modern teaching foreign languages in higher professional school is connected with the urgent society’s need for qualified specialists who master foreign languages as the tool of professional intercultural communication. It is efficient to form intercultural competence considering cultural approach in teaching foreign languages.

When studying foreign culture students will inevitably build stereotypes and generalizations about the country. That's why the first task in teaching foreign languages should be acquaintance with variety and diversity of the studied cultures. It involves collection, interpretation, analysis, synthesis and classification of information about native and foreign cultures. The adoption of the content occurs with the help of traditional, modern, actual teaching techniques which involve the use of audio and video materials in educational dialogue that provide real communication, personal realization.

Museums are associated with the spiritual values. Their cultural and information space plays a great role in educating a well-developed person. The work with students is held mostly in lecture rooms where educational atmosphere and things around are ordinary and simple. A teacher and students are in typical studying situation.

As for museums, they create educational space which increases motivation for studying. There are some specificities of museum educational process. Firstly, they are excursions, activities in the museum auditorium and lectures at expositions. Additional means in teaching as audio, video materials, multimedia programs provide the success in learning. Secondly, students can make up dialogues of different kinds: interactive dialogue of participants, "invisible" dialogue with museum exhibits and others.

Thus, museums are means of adapting to the cultural environment; its space connected with rich exhibits and culture gives wide information to students. They set the ground for formation of personal cultural experience based on personal emotions, and this experience, in its turn, defines the place for all things according to personal values.

Multimedia technologies integrate museum cultural and information space and educational environment. They allow considering the organization of the educational process from new point of view. Multimedia technologies are information technologies (IT) which provide computer graphics and text, speech and sounds, images and video. Their capabilities have been appreciated: great visibility, simplicity of presentation, easy navigation. Multimedia creates psychological conditions giving better perception and memorizing of the material. The didactic multimedia features cause new understanding and goals correction of its inculcation. The goals are following:

- students’ intellectual encouraging by defining goals of learning and using the material, as well as involvement in selection, study and organization of the material;

- intensification of learning motivation, which is achieved by clarifying the values and internal factors to study;

- development of abilities, skills training and self-study, which is achieved by extension and deepening of learning technologies and techniques.

The principle of visual learning at a different quality level is carried out with help of multimedia. This additional opportunity makes educational information visual and natural.

An abundance of scientific information, the current information environment causes the demand for project-based learning ideas. One of the types of multimedia projects is a computer presentation, which is an effective tool for enhancing methodical cognitive activity. Multimedia presentations aimed at solving communication problems and focus on the individual student. In the process of creating presentations is integrated development of all types of activity and combination of collective, pair and group work.

In this article we present our experience of work with the second year students of the Institute of languages and cultures on use of multimedia technologies, the project "Cultural heritage of our ancestors." The students prepared their own presentations on the following topics: "Olonkho as a masterpiece of world culture", "Shaman's Dream," "National Holiday of the Yakuts' ysyakh", "Vargan in music of different peoples," etc. The project method involved several steps:

1. Discussion and definition of future projects (definition of the problem and purposes of the projects.)

2. Collecting of materials connected with the theme (visiting museums, work with information sources, Internet - resources, interviews, work in libraries).

3. Working with materials (translation, correction and revision).

4. Making presentations.

5. The project presentation.

6. Evaluation of the project.

At the first stage the students discussed the themes of their projects, defined goals and purposes.

At the next stage, the students visited several museums in our city: the Museum of Regional Studies after Yemelyan Yaroslavsky, the Literature Museum after Platon Oyunsky, the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography, the Art Museum, the Jews-Harp Museum and some others, where they learned the unique exhibits and documentary monuments of the Sakha people. At this stage the students chose the most significant, important materials, interviewed the characters of future projects, museum guides, analyzed their speeches and used the resources of the Internet and various dictionaries.

During their work the students translated the reports from Russian and Yakut into foreign language, corrected the chosen material, made some changes, and learned the topical vocabulary. The students used multimedia to present their works. They had wide opportunities for material illustration with help of:

- slides – photos, drawings, pictures, text extracts;

- videos which created dynamic and pleasant emotional background;

- images and video clips with sounds, narration, music or other records provided the perception of information in a clear and entertaining way.

All these means gave the possibility to improve visual, auditory, emotional and motor memory of students.

At the final step the students showed their projects to the audience. Following questions were discussed:

- value of the people cultural heritage for the young people spiritual growth ;

- role of museums in modern life;

- use of multimedia in teaching.

At the end we analyzed the advantages and accidental errors. The students assessed own and their mates’ work, learned to answer questions with arguments, defended their points of view, took critical remarks and appreciated adequately their own work.

The project method in IT integration allows forming students’ basic and special skills. Besides basic learning competence, during the project method development and its realization we can develop ability to work in a team, ability to criticism and self-criticism. The project method is always oriented to independent activity.

This method leads to solving some problem and the result should be "practicable". In other words if a theory needs a concrete solution, the results should be ready to use.

The goals of our project were following:

- to develop steady interest in foreign languages learning;

- to develop cognitive activity ;

- to develop creative skills;

- to form students’ abilities to construct their knowledge themselves.

In conclusion,

- language and culture must be studied in interaction;

- introduction of cross-cultural component provides strong motivation and interest of students during learning process;

- multimedia technologies lessons give positive emotional background;

- due to research elements students’ activity rises;

- during searching and getting of information students save and build their knowledge about the world;

- efficiency of students' independent work increases;

- students acquire knowledge of some additional software, programs and methods of creative activities.