КаzUEFMT, senior teacher

Department "Kazakh and world languages"

The content of intercultural communication in foreign language teaching

In Linguo didactics intercultural communication is considered in the aspect of correlation rules of communication in two languages: student’s mother tongue of and a second language. This reporting of the issue can be seen in the linguists and methodologists’ works, deliberating upon the questions of learning a second language on the background of the student’s native language [1; 2; 3; 4]

Analysis of the existing literature on this issue shows that intercultural communication may become the object linguistic-didactic research in several areas:

1) intercultural communication as the correlation of the native culture and the culture of target language country (restricted traditional sense, approximate to the concepts of “cultural studies”, “linguistic-cultural studies”, “ethno-cultural studies”, “cultural linguistics”);

2) intercultural communication as an object of cognition of closely related cultures through the languages of the same language family;

3) intercultural communication as an object of correlating of different cultures through one world language.

In this article we present the possibilities of systematic transition from the first meaning to a third one in teaching the foreign language, which is a world language.

During the development of laws of foreign language functioning by students, rules that require an explanation in intercultural communication is widely used. These rules are usually of common usage that is they can be translated only by meaning in another language. In the case of direct translation into a foreign language of this usual expressions of the native language you can be misunderstood and such an expression can be absolutely unacceptable for some cultural reasons which can cause “culture shock” (term by E.M.Vereschagin and V.G.Kostomarov ) for native speakers.

Consequently, lingua-cultural component is an integral part in the content of the subject “Foreign Language”. The development of this component is performed through the integration of cultural components of the native and second language in the thematic fields (thematic blocks). So, cross-cultural comparison will accompany all stages of formation and improvement of linguistic, speech, communicative and country study competence.

In this case, students should be able not only to talk about their national traditions in an accessible form and master the national traditions of English-speaking countries (US or UK) or target language country, but also to be functionally competent in the discussion of any third/fourth culture. This expansion of the cognitive base is necessary in our globalized world. After all, today in intercultural communication our contemporary cannot be confined to the traditionally accepted materials of his country and target language country. The teacher directs students to find interesting information about any country. For example, the thematic section "Kazakhstan: national traditions" involves semantically differentiated vocabulary which is a material for the formation of lexical skills of speaking. Among these are the words and phrases (names) as alashа, tekemet, sandyk, arba, shana, ertokym, whip syrmak (felt carpet), shangyrak, yurt; national clothes like shapan, jacket, coat, malackhai, takiya (skullcap), zhaulyk, national traditions and games like shildekhana, tusaukeser, tilashar, tokymkagar, bayga, kyz kuu, altybakan, aitys; national holidays like Nawruz, Independence Day, Republic day, Ait, Kurban Ait, oraza; folk songs like zhyr, betashar, zhoktau, syngsu, besik zhyry, folk singers and zhyraus like Birzhan sal, Akan seri etc. require special attention and special work.

Similarly, we can give a thematic unit “Russia: national traditions”: Orenburg shawl, Tula samovar, matryoshka, Dymkovo toy, famous Ivanovo fabric lace fabric; jewelry, painted on enamel; wooden toys Sergievskie; embroidery; clay toys, ceramic products; Art Woodwork: balalaika, pipes, flute, zhaleyka, Gzhel porcelain products; , Ivan the Fool, Alenka, Baba Yaga, Kashchei Immortal, The Frog Princess, Vasilisa the Beautiful.

In English culture Reebok, Coca-Cola, hamburger, hot dog, French fries, Robert Burns, William Shakespeare, Beatles, Walt Disney, Halloween, Santa Claus.

Being non-equivalent, listed words require disclosing their meaning, mastering their contextual functioning, reproducing the historical period or event as a cultural background.

The vocabulary within the thematic cluster cannot and should not remain as the elements of cognitive process; it should be entered into students’ speech activity in accordance with the communicative approach to teaching.

To improve grammar skills of speaking, we use the semantic types of elementary statements, highlighted by lingo-didactician K.N.Bulatbaeva [5]. Due to this semantic classification, scientifically based selection of the most active lexicalized grammatical structures within a particular topic became possible. In our case, these are the following:

- The subject and its physical action;

- The subject and its social and ethical action;

- The subject and his intellectual action;

- The subject and its features;

- The subject and its condition;

- The subject and its movement;

- The subject and its transformation;

- The subject and the possession of anything / alienation from him anything or / exchange them something to something / his lack of anything;

- The subject and its quantitative characteristics, size, quantifiable measure of value;

- The set of entities and their relationships;

- The whole and the parts in their relationship;

- Comparison;

- Possibly expected action, the state property.

Within the framework of the given semantic types, students select relevant sentences from texts, make sentence-statements on the basis of the semantic groups of words, distribute them using secondary parts of the sentence, connect the obtained simple judgment-sentences with complex sentences using conjunctions. Thus, within the thematic field and selected ethno-cultural vocabulary students enrich their grammatical structure of foreign speech.

New ethno-cultural studies vocabulary passes the stages of listening, reading, speaking and writing. S.G.Ter-Minasova draws attention to the difficulties of the use of foreign words: “.. precisely in the process of speech production, that is, the implementation of active skills, to use language (speaking and writing), the problem of cultural barriers, cultural component, the availability of cultural background knowledge about the world of the target language is especially acute. Indeed, in order to learn and recognize the meaning of the word in the text, produced by someone, and also to make the text himself, you need to know not only the meaning of the word, but also to know as much as possible about what is behind the word, about subject-concept (thing meant), its place and function in the world where the language is used as a real means of communication” [4, P. 35].

By the time of the language skills development students already possess active vocabulary (not yet concept) on the topic and may perceive the text by listening and make guess on the content of the text. Further, these texts are projected onto the interactive whiteboard, writing and pronunciation of key words on the topic are processed, and text sentences are collectively transformed into construction, more familiar to students. In order to prepare students for speaking, the work is conducted in a pair, where the text is transformed into a list of question-answer dialogical units, revealing the features of the culture of a country; in particular the words with ethno-cultural meanings are learned as concepts. Thus on the basis of specific texts and a single cognitive approach to the study of cultural features of any nation, learners will easily switch from one culture to another. If the culture of the country of target language is studied within the classroom lessons, the students’ independent work can be filled with any material on intercultural communication expanding the range of cognition of the world.

The most interesting is the stage of dialogical skills development, following the stages of learning listening and reading. Sustainable formulas of speech etiquette of the target language are introduced at this level to achieve natural dialogic communication in a foreign language. Pre-selected list of speech intentions involves appropriate etiquette material. For example, such speech intention as a request to tell and explain the meaning of concepts, to express surprise and admiration, to compare, to thank for the information, to supplement the information from other sources, to be interested in these or other facts etc. are possible within the theme “Culture and traditions of the people”. Accordingly they activate speech etiquette formula. When teaching intercultural communication it is important to consider the types of situations when your interlocutor is the same age as yours as well as an adult who is familiar or unfamiliar, communication can take place in an informal and formal atmosphere of communication. These factors influence the selection of various lexical and grammatical means from possible synonymous row. This, in turn, establishes an association between linguistic and extra linguistic material in the minds of the secondary language personality.

Intercultural communication is also implemented indirectly in students’ monologue. Thus, in the theme of different people’s traditions it is an endless cycle of works or newspaper/magazine articles, as every modern man has a lot of opportunities to explore the traditions of various peoples in this information age. But this information is generally available from Internet sources. It is important to form such a linguistic personality, which would act as the author of his texts. The author may act as a participant or witness of the event about which he tells, as the reader of any source who learned the information on the topic, as a person motivating to study the topic or appealing to the authoritative opinion. To do this, students must be provided with language means, marking these speech tasks (expressing the author’s position).

Any topic under study can be considered in the aspect of intercultural communication when common cognitive structure of the topic on which information about different countries and peoples is imposed, is produced.

Thus, in this article we have tried to express the idea of the need to expand the concept of intercultural communication. Traditional lingua-didactic understanding as taking into account the peculiarities of rules of communication in the country of target language in terms of the cognitive process of the student on one particular topic cannot be restricted to the facts of one/two countries, he will be an interesting conversationalist with possession more information. Consequently, natural learner motivation to learn the world in its diversity through a world foreign language is necessary. Technique of mastering the facts from different cultures, as we have demonstrated, is the same, thus intercultural communication as a component of functional literacy of the secondary language personality is provided by the sequence of stages of enrichment with semantically differentiated (by micro themes) vocabulary, semantic types of elementary statements, certain dialogue structures (repeated in communication on one and the same theme on the material of different countries cultures), generation of monologue statements, representing the totality of micro themes given at the beginning of the thematic vocabulary. Speech etiquette of the target language should not be restricted to only stable formulas of communication (N.I.Formanovskaya). Together with the etiquette stereotyped phrases, students learn the principles of functioning of lexical and grammatical means in the form of independent means, as well as the means not independent communicatively, but introducing certain shade (euphemisms, form of the verb, the personal pronoun, one or other construction) in etiquette content of utterance.

The mechanism of learning the second culture (culture of the target language native speakers) can be easily transferred to the study of other cultures: this approach encourages the repetition and retention of English vocabulary and grammatical constructions, English speech etiquette, at the same time, the repetition will be accompanied by new content - students will already tell about other cultures in analogy with studied English culture.

Intercultural communication in the second semantic meaning - the object of cognition of closely related cultures through languages of one language family - can be considered in the studies on the problem of closely related bilingualism

References:

1. Vereshchagin E.M., Kostomarov V.G. Language and Culture: Lingua-cultural studies in teaching Russian as a foreign language. 4th ed., revised and updated. - M., 1990.

2. Vereshchagin E.M., Kostomarov V.G. Linguistic and Cultural Theory of the word. - M., 1980.

3. Vereshchagin E.M., Kostomarov V.G. Looking for new ways to develop linguistic area studies: concept of tactics in speech behavior. - Moscow, 1999.

4. Ter-Minasova S.G. Intercultural communication and learning foreign languages. // Language and Intercultural Communication. M., 2000. P.33-36.

5. Bulatbaeva K.N. Semantic types of elementary statements. Herald of L.N.Gumilyev ENU 2004, №1. S.