МЕЖКУЛЬТУРНОЕ ВЗАИМОДЕЙСТВИЕ В КУРСЕ АНГЛИЙСКОГО ЯЗЫКА ДЛЯ УЧИТЕЛЕЙ АНГЛИЙСКОГО ЯЗЫКА

Introduction

Intercultural interaction is regarded as the most important phenomenon in language education. And, no matter how the standards of education have been changing in recent years, intercultural interaction and its manifestation in intercultural communication and foreign language communication will always occupy a leading position in educational programs, courses and disciplines aimed at English language training. These phenomena are the essence of language education, the meaning itself of mastering any language including English, they are always brought to the main objective - to teach to communicate in the language [1, P. 192], to carry out intercultural communication [6]. Moreover, these phenomena traditionally come into all educational standards, curricula, requirements for the results of the development of basic educational programs.

The problem

Under cross-cultural interaction within this article, we understand the process of forming a new mapping of the world in the minds of future teachers of the English language through the fusion of two or more cultures in the implementation of cross-cultural communication in the process of training. On this basis, we can extract the problem, which certainly occurs when designing the system of training for future professional activity. What ways and means of forming this new world culture could be there? And what foreign language communication competence should be formed in the future English language teachers in order to achieve this goal?

The foreign language speaking implies communication in a foreign language in the space of a foreign linguistic culture, as well as the use of language to achieve specific communicative purposes. Now comes forward the problem of defining a set of competences needed to achieve the specific goals of intercultural interaction. While teaching English intercultural interaction has no global character either as 1) the interaction of the two cultures, or 2) the imposition of one culture to another, and so on, but a narrow specific character when different mappings of the world are intertwined in one individual to be trained.

The Volgograd region, where the study took place, is inhabited by people of more than 130 nationalities, so intercultural process is complicated when the students of the English language are bilingual. The process of language acquisition is often referred to as the process of the formation of a secondary language personality, but in these cases, students are already carriers of a number of cultures, so it comes to multicultural education [5].

Theoretical Background

At the English lessons in our university the process of cross-cultural interaction is based on mostly such topical approaches in real time as the competence, socio-cultural (Byram, 1997) and problematic. Accordingly, the practice sessions on English language speaking aim at developing competencies which meet modern standards, the ability to solve professional tasks and professional interaction problems, the ability to carry out the intercultural communication [12], [9], [3]. The first place is taken by such universal competences as linguistic, sociologic, discourse and strategic and etc.

At the same time we see the intersection of two processes - on the one hand, students learn foreign language culture of English-speaking countries, on the other hand, they are influenced by their native cultures (the culture of their mother tongues) in a multicultural region [19, Pp. 8-9], i.e. the formation of multicultural language personalities is arising. ... «The process of intercultural communication in the framework of a globalizing but multipolar world may increase the interaction between languages and cultures» [17, P. 6]. And overcoming the language barriers is not sufficient to communicate well in a foreign language. It is necessary to overcome the barrier of culture, to learn to think in a different language, feel its structure, to use other foreign-language phrases, to use interpretation, not word-for-word translation.

How can we organize intercultural interaction in such an environment for teaching the subject "Practical course of the first foreign language"?

The solution of the problem

To solve this problem effectively within our university, we created the textbook «Advanced English Manual», the purpose of which is to form the respective competencies of the students, the formation of the language personality within the globalization of language education. The urgency of creating a textbook is justified by the necessity to create the language manuals designed to teach to create works of various genres, to help in the assimilation of normative, communicative and ethical aspects of speech and writing, mastering the basics of speech culture [7].

In the classroom to practice verbal communication all students are involved in various kinds of foreign language activities, using case studies, problem solving, creating projects, problem learning activities in the form of teaching lessons fragments for schools, system of exercises for students to develop various kinds of speech activity and etc. And when using such strategies the efficiency of formation of intercultural communication competence is affected by various factors [2]. Selecting discursive strategy makes it possible to arrange the nominative funds in relation to specific discursive conditions, thereby ensuring the result adaptability of speech-making activity [3, P. 13] to the different interaction situations at the English class.

A unified idea of combining these strategies is a command work [20] and autonomy [14] as a way of engaging in an independent self-employment through the use of interactive resources of the Internet space such as podcasts and modern messengers: Skype, Viber, Messenger, allowing closer the real situation of language communication; Internet gaming communication conferences, electronic libraries containing linguistic and didactic English texts. This training system suggests to use the principle of equal access to information for cross-cultural communication, interpersonal communication in a foreign language, the command decision that allows to create the conditions for effective work of students in the English language class and in the performance of independent work, which is an integral part of the learning process language in the modern educational space.

... «Actually many languages are borrowing from English, Russian is no exception. But linguistic borrowing is not simply a capture of lexical items; as a result, a new word appears in another language environment with different pronunciation, different grammar categories and even meaning » [17, P. 4].

Practice and Result

Solving the challenge of building a new mapping of the world in the implementation of foreign language interaction in the class for practical English course was based on the use of modular training technology with the support of six modules for the fifth semester and the same number of modules for the sixth semester for the 3d year students. Each module includes two parts: 1) The main text with a task complex and 2) Cultural Matters section and subsections (Activity, Interpreting into English, Interpreting into Russian). Topics and content of the modules you can see in the Table number 1.

The present content is necessary for training teachers of a foreign language and is available for multilanguage personalities, because in terms of intercultural communication these topics are relevant for various languages and cultures; therefore, we view them as international.

For example, let’s consider the first module in Term 6. The main reading text extract (4 pages) is taken from the novel "Kane and Abel" by Jeffrey Archer, lexis describes relations between parents and children, respectively, the main topic is «Children and their Parents". Activity is helped by 1) Mom's Survival Tips, 2) Facing and solving the problems 3) Writing a puzzle story or a fairy-tale on the topic of the module. Russian-English interpretation texts are "D.S. Bruner for children, language and understanding" and English-Russian - «Mom Has the Last Word », «Father at Sea».

Each module includes topical and text vocabulary which contain words and word combinations, e.g. «A set of carefully worded questions», «the extent of the mutual hatred», «cut off without a penny», «to be close to flunking out», «to be put on academic probation», «a dropout», etc . The preference is given to (percentage of) informal lexis compared to formal.

Each module ends with team work project, and because students are future teachers of English, the formulation of the basic idea of the project, the distribution of roles, writing the story and etc. is their independent work and performed with minimal teacher assistance.

For example, the fifth semester modules include such interactive forms of activity (using of an active vocabulary and concordances as writing a personal letter to the world famous author, create their own version of contest on the books by one of the authors of the passages included in the modules of the fifth semester; creating the fragment broadcast scenario about the discussed problems, writing own version of the biography  of one of the authors, writing their own short detective story or a biographic story about one of the writers in the selected genre (a detective, a biography, a fairytale, a love story, a puzzle story, a poem and etc.). The textbooks, which were used for training, have been tested for more than 12 years in the Institute of Foreign Languages [15].

Below there is a fragment of a poem by Larissa Shubina, one of our students, now an English teacher at gymnasium 14, Volgograd.

She was a usual kind of girl

Demanding to a great degree

Like many people she preferred

To argue then agree

Not being pleased with coming morning

She wanted for each day to end

And all she did was always boring ..

... Except with pleasure every minute

Enjoy it to the full extent

Enjoy it, take it, use it, live it.

The way you never would forget ...

The above fragment colorfully illustrates the interaction of the Russian and the English-speaking culture, shows the possible inconsistency of these two languages. Obviously, Larissa has significantly increased the level of English proficiency, she shows her fluency in expressing her ideas and feelings in the form of varied genre, but the structural impact of the Russian language is also clearly seen, i.e., the next challenge would be her skills improving.

Conclusion

In this article we have attempted to show some ways to create conditions for the implementation of cross-cultural interaction in the practical course of English, to demonstrate what material and what means we use to form English language competence for teachers which is necessary to carry out cross-cultural interaction. We have created English language learning modules including teamwork, modern vocabulary of the English language, mainly informal, concordances.

The above study shows that at this stage of the research the tasks are successfully solved and we need to move on to the next step. No matter how fast we implement modern technology, such as modular training, the use of new authentic texts, the independent work increasing (in relation to the educational work within the students group), the use of teamwork, anyway, we have to improve our work constantly, to set new goals and objectives, because changes in the socio-cultural environment, the global educational space, language education and changing the mapping of the world as in social groups, and individual subjects also occur very rapidly.