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12Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences 4 (2013 6) 523-532
УДК 811:378.662.147 (571.16)
Peculiarities of the Specialist's Language Culture Forming within Concepts of Communicative-Informative Development
Nikolay A. Kachalov and Yekaterina S. Tarasova*
Tomsk Polytechnic University 30 Lenin Avenue, Tomsk, 634050 Russia
Received 31.12.2011, received in revised form 24.01.2012, accepted 08.07.2012
The article considers components of the (foreign language, professional and information) general culture of a specialist, the content of components and functions of the foreign language culture.
Keywords: foreign language culture, professional and information culture, components andfunctions of the foreign language culture, content of teaching.
Introduction
In the structure of the culture system researchers define two main areas: material and intellectual culture. However this division has a relative character. In reality both areas are interrelated and moreover they are enriching each other. For example, foreign language culture is often referred to the intellectual culture though the role and significance of the material aspect of the intellectual culture (development of computing and information technologies, etc) is constantly increasing. All this proves the cultural integrity.
The foreign language culture is a constituent part of the modern specialist's general culture. Besides, personal-creative approach allows to interpret the foreign language culture acquisition as the process of a personal breakthrough when input meanings are actualized on the personal level.
© Siberian Federal University. All rights reserved
* Corresponding author E-mail address: MTFL@mail.ru
The foreign language culture of a specialist has subjective and objective sides. An objective side is inserted in the requirements set by the society regarding modern specialists. Subjective side of the specialist's foreign language culture is a reflection of the objective one but this reflection is not full, it's personalized and dependent mainly on the level which shows how readily the specialist wants to master own foreign language culture.
The foreign language culture of a specialist is interacting with professional and information culture. Professional culture embraces strategies developed individually, the means for reality orientation, algorithms for solving work problems and for transferring it from real state into target-oriented. Information culture of a specialist comprises a set of knowledge, capabilities and skills necessary for task-oriented work with information as well as modern information and
communication technologies used for information collecting, processing and transferring (Chvanova, Lipskiy, 2000: 74).
By constant interaction foreign language, professional and information cultures add to each other while being constituent parts of the general culture of a specialist. Information culture represents the means for the development of the foreign language culture. Professional culture defines professional focus of the foreign language culture. As the purpose of learning the foreign language culture has a social, linguistic and cultural, pedagogical and psychological meaning which corresponds to all aspects of learning and evolves from the content of the subject "The Foreign language".
Components of Foreign Language Culture
The foreign language culture consists of certain components which merge into the unified system. Nominally they can be divided into personal and operational components. Personal component includes motivational, emotional-volitional, axiological, cognitive and ethic-aesthetic components. Since operational component is a basis for practical knowledge and skills, it embraces informative, instrumental and object components. The system of metaknowledge i.e. information culture is a structure that goes across all the components mentioned.
We suppose that the content of components within the foreign language culture which is evolving under the conditions of informatization, should be determined according to the main goals of its forming. Motivational component reveals itself in the wish of a learner to acquire a foreign language, to know all realities inherent in foreign culture society as well as in the need of self-realization in the modern information environment and in the pursuit of success. Furthermore, it shows up in the need to perform the functions
creatively, in the interest in communication, in obtaining necessary information using information and communication technologies, in wish to make these technologies do the routine part of the work and in attempt to make the work more intellectualized.
The essence of the emotional-volitional component lies in the commitment of a learner to acquire the foreign language culture, attempt to improve self-guided work in this direction. Special attention is given to the sense of a personal responsibility for the result of the activity, focusing efforts on creative way of work by applying information and communication technologies.
Axiological component deals with forming of a learner's value system targeted at knowledge, education, and professional activity as well as at the forming of world outlook and moral principles. The set of formed, established values constitutes a type of an axis of consciousness which provides the sustainable development of an individual, succession of behavior types and activity expressed in the field of a learner's focus.
Cognitive component assumes that a learner conceives professional tasks, requiring foreign language culture acquisition, understands possible changes of the professional activity in the constantly changing information environment. Besides, a learner understands the necessity of personal participation in adapting the reality to new conditions as well as the need to form individual mentality in information society.
Ethic-aesthetic component implies forming learner's moral and ethical values, aesthetic culture in the process of intellectual-cultural and moral-practical activity.
Informative component includes knowledge of mechanisms responsible for the forming and mastering of a foreign language culture basing on application of information and communication technologies.
Instrumental component deals with the skill to use both conventional and modern information and communication technologies for the forming of the foreign language culture of a specialist as well as the skill to transform the information constituent of the work by applying computing technologies for the solution of professional tasks.
Obj ect component covers both the knowledge of methods and technologies intended for foreign language acquisition which in its turn facilitates foreign culture acquisition, information and communication development and skills to apply the obtained knowledge of information culture in professional and social life.
Real content of all these components has been defined by the society in the course of a social practice. Hence, it can be noted that, first of all, the information culture factor has been always present in these components and secondly, its volume is increasing with the development of the society.
Content of Foreign Language Culture
The character of social requirements to information culture of a specialist has been changing in accordance with information technologies and all kinds of scientific and technological progress. The level of these requirements is an indicator of the country's development in one or another historical period. The higher is the level of information and communication technologies development - the more efficient is the process of foreign language culture forming.
The process of foreign language learning brings foreign culture, facilitates information and communication development. As the process of foreign language culture acquisition occurs gradually we pointed out objects for learning, the set of which constitutes the content of the foreign
language culture. Quantization of the foreign language culture as the purpose, specification of its content deal with all its aspects: educational, cognitive, developing and pedagogic (Passov, 2000: 98).
The educational aspect (the social meaning of the purpose) lies in the fact that the learner acquires all the forms of communication and all speech functions. Foreign language acts as the means of interpersonal communication, enriching the spirit world, understanding national and cultural peculiarities of the country studied, defending own statements, promoting native culture, friendship of different peoples, economic and social progress, etc.
Depending on the level of foreign culture acquisition, professional focus of learning the specific goals are defined for each type of speech activity - speaking, writing, reading, listening, translation/interpreting.
Sociality of the communication teaching requires efficient influence of an individual on the interlocutor and on the surrounding reality as well. This fact means the benefit which is brought by individuals with a foreign language culture both to themselves and eventually to the society.
Another important component of the educational aspect goal is acquiring skills of self-guided work. In the course of teaching fundamentals for further growth of the level of foreign language culture are being laid down. This means that it's necessary to teach the learner how to learn.
Cognitive aspect (language and cultural content of the purpose) presupposes the use of foreign language culture teaching as the means of spiritual enrichment of a person. Cognitive activity shows up in the acquisition of linguistic knowledge (about the system of the language, its structure, character, peculiarities, similarities and differences with the mother tongue) and
knowledge about the culture of the foreign language country (literature, music, architecture, painting, history, etc). Also cognitive aspect means the use of foreign culture teaching as the method of satisfying personal cognitive needs in any sphere of personality's activity.
The process of foreign culture acquisition is confined to the level of the purpose and time limits. Thus, most valuable teaching material sufficient for representing the foreign culture as a whole is being selected and typified. The most significant and important criterion for the selection of necessary minimal material is academic feasibility. This requirement is subdivided into more specific criteria:
- the teaching material should be focused on typical cultural phenomenon;
- the teaching material should be focused on linguistic knowledge;
- reliability of information;
- consideration of the learners' age and interests, professional focus as well as the time allocated for foreign language learning;
- practical value i.e. taking into account demand for such skills and capabilities in future;
- pedagogical (aesthetic, etc) value.
Hence, the cognitive aspect is tightly
connected with the developing aspect of the foreign culture in general and with motivation in particular.
The developing aspect means that psychological content of the foreign culture as the goal lies in the fact that the nomenclature of objects to be developed intentionally is determined, and special teaching aids facilitating the development are used. They are:
- verbal abilities (phonematic hearing, linguistic intuition, capabilities for making a guess, for distinguishing, imitation, logical narration, etc);
- psychic functions connected with speech activity (verbal symbolic process, all kinds of memory, attention, imagination, perception, etc);
- communication capabilities;
- such character features as ambitiousness, will, commitment, activity, etc;
- learning skills;
- motivation for further acquisition of foreign culture (obtaining experience of positive emotional attitude towards foreign language, experience oriented at the value system of a learner's personality as well as understanding of significance of foreign language acquisition);
- maturity for self-guided work after graduation.
The development of mentioned capabilities is an essential component of educational system and the main condition for successful acquisition of all aspects of foreign culture with educational aspect being emphasized.
Upbringing aspect of the foreign language culture (pedagogical content of the purpose) is first of all penetrating the whole educational process: it nurtures everything - the text content, its layout, replicable situation, what the teacher says, how the teacher says it, etc. Secondly, upbringing as a process is integral and indivisible: there is no moral upbringing without aesthetic one, labor nurturing is impossible without moral, etc.
Teaching foreign culture via communication reveals broad possibilities for moral upbringing because in the process of communication one can raise and discuss hundreds of different issues. Perhaps no other subject has such broad possibilities. Moral upbringing contains huge social potential and importance of foreign culture acquisition. Thus, the main task is to identify specific possibilities of foreign culture in this regard and integrate them into the system of education.
The task assigned to the foreign language culture is showing up in the whole range of specific functions:
- Gnostic function of the foreign language culture. Knowledge providing the integral image of gnosis and perception of the world is the most important component of this function. It has dual focus: on the one hand, focus is on the knowledge systematizing, on the other hand - on person's self-cognition.
- Communicative function of the foreign culture. Using this function a human can communicate with people either immediately or mediately. Main carriers of communicative function are verbal language, "paper and electronic components" of a pedagogical program complex. Paper-based component includes usual textbook, learning aids, lectures, oral narration of a teacher. Electronic component can embrace: teaching program, electronic textbook, modeling program, electronic problem book, testing system.
- Regulatory (or normative) function of the foreign culture comprises definite indicators of achievement and development, reveals itself as a system of norms and requirements and it is implemented on the wide range of levels: 1) rules of morality: 2) legal rules which can be relied on in further activity.
- Evaluative (informative) function which forms and activates the student's skill to orient in the dataflow, select well-known and new, relevant and non-essential information. Informative function of the culture allows to transfer social experience both between generations and within one generation. This function can be performed only by the culture having the sign system in the form of notions, words, etc.
- Humanistic function of the foreign language culture which reflects its social meaning and intended for the forming a certain type of a person.
- Developing function of the foreign language culture. All functions are united in it and obey it. The issue is not only in adopting certain system of knowledge but in the necessity of intense internal work of a human which leads to self-realization.
These functions are deeply interwoven, interact with each other, transform into one acting as a whole.
The process of forming the foreign language culture is targeted at the development of the person. As it was already mentioned above the foreign language culture encompasses social, cultural and linguistic, pedagogical and psychological value. By absorbing the foreign culture a learner acquires knowledge of all realities inherent to foreign culture society, social experience, history, philosophy, mentality and moral values. Thus it can be concluded that the level of the foreign culture acquisition should allow the learner to approach the mentality of a native speaker's culture.
Being a spiritual substance the mentality of a society embodies in culture. Culture is a basis of mentality for any society, its equivalent which is reflected in various tangible media - books, works of art, historical sites, scientific papers, archaeological evidence of lifestyle dynamics.
Success of foreign culture adoption is directly proportional to how well a foreign culture integrates into the native culture, how adequately it is comprehended and perceived, how close cultural and historical experiences of speakers from different countries are. Understanding foreign traditions in their own sense means adapting the learner's conscious to new socio-cultural conditions, makes new requirements to the person itself, and brings changes in the moral side of the culture, value hierarchy, lifestyle, human relations.
Thus, the essence of the foreign language culture is that it is the part of the culture of
foreign language community, reflected in the society (nation) mentality and formed in the process of the foreign language acquisition. This is a product of a human's creative activity. The content of the foreign language culture comprises social, linguistic and cultural, pedagogical and psychological aspects which comply with educational, cognitive, upbringing and developing aspects of teaching. It includes knowledge, skills, the level of intellectual, moral and aesthetic development as well as world view, methods and types of communication.
Main Stages of Language and Culture Studies in Terms
of Language Personality Evolvement
Language and culture exist in a dialogue with the subject of speech and its addressee always referring to the culture. The subject of culture or language is always an individual, society or personality. As well as language the culture represents forms of consciousness reflecting human's world outlook. Culture is included into language.
Contemporary linguistics becomes more and more targeted at a human. Such notions as a language personality and its structure are being integrated into the paradigm of scientific thinking.
Currently the issue of a linguistic personality is attracting much attention due to the revival of studies addressing the investigation of a speaking individual's personality within the framework of such linguistic sciences as traditional linguistics, linguo-pragmatics and linguo-didactics. For the past decade linguistics "reactivated" the description of a language system by levels, and then moved to the synthesis of research methods, nominative language structure and its capacities on the basis of investigation of strategies and mechanisms responsible for the transfer of speech/cognitive acts into communicative/
discursive practice with a speaker/listener as main characters (Vinokur, 1993:116).
Afterwards linguistics turned to the human factor in the language and namely to the studies of how language is used by the subject of speech depending on his/her knowledge of the world. This resulted in the research of the language factor in a human i.e. how cultural and linguistic world image (Yakovleva, 1996: 45) influences a human, forming his/her language consciousness (Nikitina, 1993: 65) as well as cultural and national self-consciousness, world outlook and world view.
Majority of researchers focused on functional studying of a language personality, language as a tool of social interaction. Main purpose of a natural language is to provide communication between people. This communication occurs under various conditions stipulated by physical, socio-cultural and language factors. In a broad sense pragmatics is considered as a system of communication rules including language communication. Studies of pragmatics cover a wide range of directions: conversational (speech act), functional (rhetoric and stylistics) and pshycolinguistic (speech generation and perception).
Communicative-active approach of the language personality study is predominating in most of research. Range of problems connected to the study of a communicative personality is based on vast linguistic practice.
Determining the language personality as a linguistic concept several plans can be defined: axiological, cognitive and behavioral (Karasik, 1993: 34). Thus, the communicative personality acts as a generalized image of the carrier with cultural-language and communicative-active values, knowledge, behavior rules and the structure of the language personality includes the whole range of linguistic and extra-linguistic factors, which are reflecting the world image.
However the most relevant field of research now does not lie in the area of abstract language speaker modeling but comprehensive research in the field of real language speaker study. Main aspects of the problem "human and language" (Sirotinina, 1996: 102) have already been defined and include the following:
1) biological (speech and physiological characteristics of a human namely left or right dominance, right hander or left hander, speech dependence on age, gender, intellectual abilities of a speaker, difference in the speech of a normal human being and a mentally sick one, changes in the manner of speaking caused by different mental diseases, etc);
2) psychological (the influence of a psychological type, "mindset" of a human on the speech, the influence of a human's psychological state at the moment of speaking on his/her speech, different manners of uttering, etc);
3) social (the range of social roles of a human, speech, self-realization of a human in one of the social roles, relation of a human to a certain ethnic group, society, social stratum, social group, profession, political and ideological dependence on the speech, etc);
4) cultural (relation of a human to a certain national culture, definite type of a intranational culture);
5) creative (ratio of normative and obligatory content in speech to individual and creative, methods of text generation adherent to the individual which allow to recognize a person by speech; principles and character of case text use in the speech, etc);
6) personal (conditions of language person forming, factors influencing this process, etc).
Hence, aspects of the "language personality" problem as well as their constituents are almost inexhaustible and very time-consuming but they serve as a basis for further research.
Aspects of treating the language personality as a linguistic phenomenon are both versatile and sophisticated: language personality as a linguistic and philosophic problem, verbal and semantic aspect of a language personality, language levels and issues of language personality structuring, communicative-pragmatic problems of a language personality forming.
The statement that the language personality allows to consider interacting fundamental language properties on a systematic basis doesn't need any special evidence:
1) personality is a concentration and result of social signs;
2) personality is a product of ethnic historical development;
3) personality is a reason of its motivational inclinations arising from the interaction of biological motives with social and physical conditions;
4) personality is a creator and user of sign structures i.e. structural ones.
A lot of studies are mainly targeted at the analysis of a language personality. This field of study is still very critical. It is being developed within theoretical linguistics, where the language personality becomes one of the most significant objects of research.
This is also crucial for the development of the foreign language teaching theory and practice. Language learning is impossible without study of speech behavior of native speakers, users, special language personalities. The term "language personality" presupposes a real subject who has certain set of assigned properties and capabilities allowing him/her perform purely human activity - speaking, communicating, creating oral and written sentences, which are meeting the
goal and conditions of communication, extracting necessary information from texts, perceiving the speech.
Under "language personality" Yu.N. Karaulov understands the set of capabilities and characteristics of a human stipulating creation and perception of speech sentences (texts) which differ in:
a) degree of structural and language complexity;
b) depth and accuracy of reality reflection;
c) certain target orientation (Karaulov, 1987: 78).
Anthropocentric approach to language learning means approaches different from traditional ones. These are approaches which analyze products of speech activity when a researcher sees the system of language behind each text. It can be said that the language personality reveals its communicative capabilities and properties in "products" of own communicative activity - in texts, oral and written utterances of both monologic and dialogical origin. In other words, texts, representing the unity of meaning and speech which forms the meaning, can be referred to as the characteristics of a language personality.
Conclusion
It is widely known that three main factors responsible for the personality socialization are 1) natural, 2) social and 3) personal. At this stage of linguistics and sociolinguistics development the main task is to make a philology student understand that without knowing foreign language as the native one it is impossible to teach it as foreign. Methods of foreign language teaching are close to understanding that the model of language teaching is restricted by the system of this language, avoiding the interference in the aura of the language personality and, consequently, model's efficiency is limited to a certain extent.
As it is obvious that the image of an average language speaker has changed over the past years because these changes are basically endless, the program of language person analysis will never lose its importance either for theoretical linguistics or for linguo-didactics. The study of a language personality falls into two main directions. The first direction is aimed at the analysis of an object (this approach characterizes studies of linguists and psychologists), the second direction is targeted at the programs of synthesis, genesis of a language personality and this very direction is active and specific to linguo-didactics.
To achieve good results of communication and information development in foreign language teaching it is necessary to base on the statement on the social origin of the language with communicative function being the most important function in socialization of a personality which results from the human's social concept of a personality. Social-communicative nature of the language itself should act as a methodological basis for linguo-didactic theories and provide them opportunity to connect a foreign language learner to new social reality via various communication channels taking into account personal features of an individual - representative of another language reality (Khaleeva, 1989: 34).
Hence, the approach to correct foreign speech teaching by forming foreign culture language personality is seen as an objective necessity because the methods of foreign language teaching have to teach the carrier of one world outlook from one socio-cultural community to understand the carrier of another language world outlook.
The situation of communication dictates the use of various language sub-systems selected by the speaker (language personality). This recognition of different language codes, ability to switch from one code into another depending on the situation, maturity to use different subsystems existing within one language i.e. the phenomenon
of dyglossia - all this specifies combinatorics of different language personalities within one language personality (Klobukova, 1997: 112).
Consequently, it can be asserted that any language personality is a multi-component paradigm of language personalities which are developing from level to level, besides, this process goes in a spiral, from co-center to co-center, gradually going over it again.
Concretion of the teaching process on the main stage of education is validated in relation to three-stage structure of a personality which is classifies, on the one hand, - by degree of acquiring this or that level of the language, from the other hand - by kinds of speech activity, and finally - by topics, situations describing communication.
In this regard the task of correct foreign speech culture teaching is creating the model of teaching which is capable of filling the gap between "foreign socio-cultural" communicants by reducing "potential difference" in the systems of language expressive means (Ignatova, 1995: 83).
This allows to specify final goals of teaching foreign speech culture to subjects of education:
- development of communicative competence, which is forming the language personality, using required word combinations, grammatical structures corresponding to certain culture norms of speech behavior for most precise thoughts' expression, adequate and feasible use of language means in compliance with the requirement of rich, expressive and correct speech;
- acquisition and use of knowledge and emotions of language means, including normative, communicative, ethical, pragmatic
components taking into account step-by-step character of "secondary" language and cognitive conscious evolvement characteristic for natural foreign culture and language carrier of verbal and associative network;
- connection of learners to language and linguo-cognitive world image;
- teaching understanding and generation of grammatically correct and semantically precise own speech products - texts.
Components mentioned above should be always enriched with the development of an individual (dynamic approach to teaching speech interaction culture, communicative-informative development) and it should provide the efficiency of communication.
Thus, everything stated above allows to outline new approaches in teaching speech culture to subjects of teaching by means of new achievements in the field of linguistics, psycholinguistics, ethno-psycholinguistics, text theory. Language personality is a personality expressed in the language (text) and by the language, reconstructed in the main on the basis of language means (Karaulov, 1987: 34).
In our opinion this definition of a language personality gives further insight and opens new horizons in methods of foreign language teaching and furthermore it determines the goal of speech culture teaching: evolvement and development of communicative competence which is forming a language personality of a future specialist. This competence implements necessary structures of speech interaction which conform with norms of speech activity of an individual who belongs to other language community and national world image.
References
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Особенности формирования языковой культуры специалиста в свете концептуальных положений коммуникативно-информационного развития
Н.А. Качалов, Е.С. Тарасова
Томский политехнический университет Россия 634050, Томск, пр. Ленина 30
В статье рассмотрены составные части общей культуры специалиста (иноязычная, профессиональная и информационная), содержание компонентов и функции иноязычной культуры.
Ключевые слова: иноязычная культура специалиста, профессиональная и информационная культура, компоненты и функции иноязычной культуры, содержание обучения.
