EFFECTS OF PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES ON THE ENGLISH TEACHERS’ COMMUNICATION COMPETENCES DEVELOPMENT

International Kazakh-Turkish University by H. A. Yassawi

Kerimbaeva B.T. - Teacher of English Department

Kendjaeva B.B. - Teacher of English Department

РЕЗЮМЕ

В этой статье рассматривается формирование коммуникативной компетенции на основе профессиональных действий будущих учителей английского языка.

The basic professional competences of teachers are: educational competence, program competence and communication competence. The paper investigates formative impact of teacher’s professional dealing with the communication competences development of secondary (high) school teachers. Indicators of communication competence are: interaction involvement, conflict resolution style and team-work attitudes.

There are two parallel samples: one group consists of 60 teachers of different professional education who work in the secondary school teaching process and a parallel group consists of 60 subjects of the same profession teachers, but they work in other professional domains.

Examples of the particular results includes the following: engineers in teaching and engineers out of teaching process demonstrate the similar communication characteristics, and very rarely differences: teachers (professionals in teaching process) choose the indulgence style of conflict resolution frequently than non-teachers. The conclusion is that teaching work doesn’t make spontaneous socialization of communication competence at the communication level formative to more effective teaching interaction. It is necessary to teach teachers’ communication skills both at the initial education level for the teaching work, and continually in the professional domain.[1]

Teachers’ (professional) development is a lifelong process. It goes through several steps and requires some professional decisions – beginning with the child’s fantasy about being a primary school teacher similar to the teacher the child meets, over high school selection and the teacher faculty selection, to the employment within the school system. Teachers’ professional development consists of the improvement of the teachers’ awareness about: what he/she does, how he/she does it, how he/she can improve professional dealing?

Professional development of teachers should provide relevant and formative impact of teacher professional skills, knowledge and abilities on the students’ development as well as on the realization of teachers’ potentials in their professional engagement. Teacher’s profession is the profession of specific educational services. Considering that characteristic, the teachers’ professional development is the sequences of chosen activities which increase the teacher’s professionalism in educational interaction.

The entry of the professionals from a certain profession into the teaching process determines the new profession: they become the teachers of the specific teaching domains; they are not representatives of some profession in teaching.

Traditional approach to teacher education is still present though not as a dominant approach. According to traditional approach, it is important, and enough, that teacher knows the contents and structure of scientific achievements from which subject contents is derived in order to be qualified to work in a school and to educate students. Current trends of educational system development modify this approach of teacher education according to the confirmed empirical results and the theories of professional development. [2]

Professional competences are the system of knowledge, skills, abilities and motivational disposition which provide the effective realization of the professional teaching activities. Teachers’ professional competences are determined by the social-interaction characteristics of the instructional process.[3]

The investigators agree about differentiation of the educational and program teacher competences. According to the continuality of the teacher’s professional development, the teacher’s professional improvement means the development of three fundamental professional competences: (1) educational competences, (2) program (content) competences and (3) communication competences.[4]

Teachers’ professional action is the component of the sociointeractive procedures of education realization. Since the teaching process is an interactive category, the conditions of effective social interaction are at the same time the conditions of the effective teaching process. Communication is the most obvious manifestation of the social interaction. The effectiveness of education in the school situations is determined by the quality of the communication process.

Teacher professional action is a dimension of educational process of teaching, so the frames of educational communicology are to be applied. Also, it is a dimension of the teacher’s job, thus the business communicology rules should be applied.

Educational communicology formulates the following principles of the teachers’ communication: mutual respect and esteem of students arousing students to communicate, communication process reversibility; awareness of the communication activities and means repertoire; awareness of the communication behaviour and the manner of the changing. Business communicology formulates the following communication principles of teachers’ communication: communication process reversibility; communicator flexibility; self-esteem, esteem of the communication partner and situation; team work, continual learning of the communication skills.[5]

Developed empirical and frequent experimental investigations of the professional dealing and communication competences confirmed the following: there is the causal link between the learning and training of adequate communication behaviours, and the effectiveness in professional dealing.

The teachers with developed communication competences are more effective in all segments of the teaching process. They have skills to model and manage teaching communication (to regulate the interaction and control social situations, define and change the aims of communication and teaching conversation, etc.).

Communication competent teacher is:

- adaptable and flexible;

- involved in the conversation – he/she manifests the involvement in conversation by behavioral manifestations (gests, visual direction), and by cognitive activities (concluding, repeating key sentences, paraphrasing);

- he/she has skills to manage conversation (to regulate interaction and control social situations, define and change the aims of the conversation);

- considers the social relations and make a plan of the engagement;

- he/she has developed empathy;

- he/she is effective in the communication process – sustain the aims of conversation and personal aims;

- he/she has expectations coordinated to the situation;

- he/she is ready to team work;

- he/she is learning continually about communication process, and is gaining insights about communication situation; he/she is aware of his/her own behaviour;

- continually develop the communication skills, train and test messages exchange;

- continually master the use of different communication means.[6]

Communication competence is considered as a person’s ability to choose communication behavior which is suitable to achieve the aim of the social relation. Communication competence integrates the two dimensions, cognitive and behavioral, and the basic communication skills. Cognitive dimension consists of the awareness process and cognitive processing of information. Behavioral dimension indicates different manifestations of communication competence.

Scholars believe that the social cognitive processes are important for the planning and assessing communication behavior. They investigated the impact of the interpersonal awareness and social knowledge to the communication competences assessment. Interpersonal awareness is the level at which a person is paying attention to other people and his/her own communication behaviour during interaction and how that person responds to what he/she is observing.

Interaction involvement is the characteristic of the person who makes the personal interaction with the other person. It is one of the communication competences’ manifestations. Basically, it is behavioral communication skills. But, it also includes interpersonal awareness (cognitive skills of communication competences) and integrates it with the other behaviour in direct communication (behavioral skills).

Interaction involvement is complex concept: it is “the extent to which an individual participates with another in conversation.” Highly involved people integrate feelings, thoughts and experiences with the ongoing interaction; their consciousness is directed toward self, others and conversation topic; their speech can be marked as consistency and understanding; they have focus on the message meanings and importance; they are more effective to take information. [7]

Education and teaching process consist of communication among the group members and communication between groups. The special conditions of teachers work are the skills and strategy of team work, and ability to organize students’ team-work in the classroom.

The skills of the nonviolent communication and conflict resolving are the components of the teachers’ communication competences. The teacher should be mediator in social interaction. He is interested in constructive conflict resolving and increasing awareness of the strategy of resolving interpersonal conflicts. There are four dimensions of the resolving interpersonal conflict styles: integration, domination, negotiating and indulgence. Teachers resolve conflict differently, according to their personal characteristics. To improve student development in school, it is important to improve teachers’ abilities to make integrative or compromise strategy of resolving conflicts and to teach students how to apply these strategies.

Teaching work does not make spontaneous socialization of communication competence at the communication level formative to more effective teaching interaction.

Since communication competence is formative for the entire teacher’s successful professional action (the teaching is socio-interactive communication process), it is necessary to strengthen these competences in a systematic way by organizing suitable training programs for in-service teachers as well as future teachers of technical engineering during their initial education.

Various models of communication competence development are applied in teacher education and training, but the following elements are common:

Systematic acquisition of adequate communication behaviour of teachers begins by obtaining information of the communication process; then there is instruction about communication signs types, characteristics of signs, the sign meaning in different context, the rules of signs use and shape messages.

Improvement of awareness of what the special communication activities mean is the initial step of changing teacher’s communication. That step makes possible for teachers to choose the communication manner, to extend communication competences and to initiate the changes in students’ behaviour. Measuring effects of communication skills development programs for different professional groups suggests that systematic approach to development of employee’s communication competences improves work effectiveness; the rules of business action and contact boundaries are clearly defined, the work conflicts are diminishing, partners are satisfied, the social contact stress is diminishing, etc. [8]

Teachers should develop adequate social skills, conduct wide repertoire of communication strategies, learn and understand causes and consequences of their communication actions, develop abilities to find and apply the best communication alternatives and to make adequate improvisation and redefinition of action plan, taking into consideration new moments in a social situation.

Literature

1. Savignon S.J. Interpreting communicative Language Teaching/ Context and Concerns of Teacher Education. – New Haven & London: University Press. – 2002/ - 243 p.

2. Widdowson H.G. Teaching Language as Communication. Oxford, 1979.- 273p.

3. Maslyko E.A. Communicative English for Intensive Learning. - Minsk, 1989.- 240 p.

4. Alatis James. The Psychic Rewards of Teaching // Forum, vol. 42, 2004. – №2. – P. 2 – 8.

5. Brumfit S. Johnson K. The Communicative Approach to Language Teaching. – Oxford, 1981. – 234 p.

6. Blazquez B.A. Reflection as a Necessary Condition for Action Research //Forum, Vol. 45, № 1. - 2007. – P. 26 – 35.

7. Hatton N. & Smith D. Reflection in Teacher Education. Towards Definition & Implementation. // Teaching and Teacher Education. – Vol.11, Iss. 1. – 1995. – P. 33 – 49.

8. Wallace M. J. Training Foreign Language teachers. A Reflective Approach. CUP, 1995. – 180 p.