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ПЕДАГОГИКА
UDK 378 DOI: 10.34130/2233-1277-2019-4-200-211
Yu. Yu. Baryshnikova, V. A. Maltseva I
Pitirim Sorokin Syktyvkar State University, Syktyvkar
Dialogue of civilizations and intercultural collaboration as essential elements of developing professional competence of a future teacher
The relevance of the present issue is caused by the need to intensify the process of professional training of future teachers and get it to a higher modern level, to develop skills required for successful intercultural cooperation between Russian and foreign students, who study in a Russian educational institution. The aim of the article is to identify and develop effective ways in order to form professional competencies of future teachers. Creating a speaking club in Pitirim Sorokin Syktyvkar State University is the main method of the research as it is a unified platform for interpersonal and intercultural communication. Therefore, it proves to be an effective tool for self-fulfillment of Russian and foreign students. The article states and proves that joint creative activities of Russian and foreign students in a Russian educational institution successfully addresses a number of issues, including efficient verbal communication with foreign students, pedagogical experience for future teachers, development of their professional speech culture and methodology of communication, etc. Comprehensive engagement into Russian culture, establishment of communicative competence and professional world view are an essential condition for integration and adaptation of foreign students in Russia. Materials presented in the article allow to make a conclusion that regular student communication hosted by the speaking club and continuous pedagogical practical work intensify the educational process, increase the engagement level, and expand the professional competence of future specialists, which contributes to successful achievement of the educational goal, popularization of the Russian language and culture.
Keywords: professional competence, communicative competence, communication, dialogue, education.
© Baryshnikova Yu. Yu., Maltseva V. A., 2019
200
Ю. Ю. Барышникова, В. А. Мальцева
Сыктывкарский государственный университет имени Питирима Сорокина,
г. Сыктывкар
Диалог цивилизаций и межкультурное сотрудничество как важные составляющие развития профессиональных компетенций будущего учителя
Актуальность исследуемой проблемы обусловлена необходимостью интенсифицировать процесс профессиональной подготовки будущих педагогов и продвинуть его на более высокий, современный уровень, сформировать навыки успешного осуществления межкультурного сотрудничества между российскими и иностранными студентами, обучающимися в российском вузе. Цель данного исследования заключается в выявлении и разработке эффективных путей формирования профессиональных компетенций будущих учителей. Ведущим методом в исследовании данной проблемы явилась организация работы разговорного клуба при Сыктывкарском государственном университете имени Питирима Сорокина как единой площадки осуществления межличностной и межкультурной коммуникации, благодаря чему разговорный клуб становится эффективным инструментом для самореализации российских и иностранных студентов. В статье раскрыто и обосновано, что совместная творческая деятельность российских и иностранных студентов в российском вузе успешно решает ряд задач, в числе которых организация эффективной речевой коммуникации иноязычных студентов и педагогической практики будущих учителей, развитие речевых навыков, формирование методики коммуникации и т. д. Включенность в российскую культуру, осуществляемая на систематической основе, формирование коммуникативной компетенции и профессионального образа мира является одним из важнейших условий интеграции и адаптации иностранных студентов в России. Представленные в статье материалы позволяют сделать вывод, что одновременно регулярное общение студентов в рамках разговорного клуба и получение навыков педагогической практики ведут к интенсификации процесса обучения, повышению уровня вовлеченности и расширению профессиональной компетенции будущих специалистов, что способствует более качественной реализации цели обучения, популяризации русского языка и культуры России.
Ключевые слова: профессиональная компетенция, коммуникативная компетенция, коммуникация, диалог, обучение.
Introduction
Professional training of students in a higher educational institution complies primarily with the target of establishing a professional world view of future specialists, and it is achieved mainly in the course of interpersonal communication. Teacher's mission is to establish the ability to carry out personal and professional communication for future specialists, and the ability to transfer communication skills to pupils for future
teachers. The ability to carry out communication and to achieve its purpose, which indicates its successful performance, proves to be an essential quality of a professional in any field of expertise in the modern world.
Foreign students of a Russian higher educational institution have a challenge, because unlike Russian students, they have to study Russian as a foreign language along with courses of their chosen speciality, it being the means of communication in the Russian community and the language of their future profession. Foreign students have challenging tasks to master a non-native language as quickly as possible and to successfully integrate into a different culture, to accept its values, which promotes successful acquisition of new knowledge and further professional fulfillment. Russian students, who are teachers-to-be, participate together with foreign students in creative extracurricular activities aimed at cultural interaction, exchange and acquisition of ethnocultural, national (Russian] and human values. Therefore, they don't only contribute to quick integration of foreign students, but also develop their own professional competencies, which are required for further work in the multicultural educational space.
Approaches to intensification of this process have been developed and efficiently applied in Pitirim Sorokin Syktyvkar State University: organization of a speaking club and participation in multinational projects, ethnic festivals, forums and festivals.
The following methods were used in terms of research: theoretical (analysis; synthesis; concretizing; generalization; analogy; modeling, games]; diagnostic (questionnaire; testing; method of problems and tasks]; empirical (analysis of work experience of educational organizations, regulatory and educational documentation; pedagogical observation]; experimental (summative, formative, control experiments].
Pitirim Sorokin Syktyvkar State University unites Indian, Nepali, Egyptian, Algerian, Palestinian, Ghanaian, Sudanese, Zambian, Libyan, Jordanian, Kyrgyz, Azerbaijanian and other students on a single language platform. The University's track record demonstrates that continuous dialogue embedded into the system of professional education of foreign students and aided by the students of Institute of Foreign Languages promotes a quicker and more successful mastering of Russian as a foreign language, and forming of professional skills of future specialists. Due to the involvement of both, foreign students and future teachers, in successful interpersonal and intercultural communication, a speaking club is becoming an effective tool for the personal fulfillment of both parties of the communication process.
Body
The most important goal of successful communication is to influence the interlocutors and get a feedback; that means, the effective interaction
of all communication participants. Therefore, to develop an ability to carry out successful interpersonal communication is one of the main results of the educational process. A representative of the so-called communicative professions cannot perform his/her professional functions without using efficiently his/her communication skills. Professional communication is the main means of professional activity.
According to V.Konetskaya, there were many attempts to simulate the process of interpersonal communication based on various approaches to understanding its nature and functions [1, p. 164]. The challenges related to this simulation are caused by the fact that interpersonal communication is actualized in various forms, in terms of specific functions and a communicative situation. The following components are found in structural models: a person, who transmits information (the sender], what is transmitted (the information], a person, to whom information is transmitted (the recipient], how information is transmitted (the channel], and feedback (direct or indirect]. Descriptive models contain two more components: effectiveness of communication and its conditions (environment, number of participants, temporal and spatial characteristics, etc.]. It isn't always possible to define the first component, since the effectiveness can be assessed differently by each communicator. It is difficult to find the place of both components, since their connections with the basic components are unstable and multidirectional.
It should be noted that the effectiveness of interpersonal communication is assessed on the basis of the actualization of two main social functions - interacting and impacting. Impacting that takes place in terms of interpersonal communication is a complex process, the mechanisms of which are being studied by modern researchers. To arrange interlocutor's activity, who is the object of impacting (the recipient], is the ultimate goal of communicative impacting. According to A.Leontyev, "by impacting on the recipient, we want to "provoke" him/ her and lead his/her behavior in the right direction, to find "weak points" in his/her activity, to identify the factors that control it and to selectively impact on them" [2, p. 271]. A.Leontyev distinguished impacting through awareness and impacting through conviction.
The phenomenon of communicative impacting is closely related to cognitive processes, which take place in terms of speech communication. According to I.Sternin, communicative impacting is impacting of a person on another person or a group of people with the help of speech and nonverbal means in order to achieve the speaker's goal [3, p. 54]. With the help of the language, people don't only inform each other, but interact and manage their social relations. Therefore, the texts, which they exchange in the process of communication and which are used as units of communication, perform the function of communication and impact and manage the behavior of communicants. We act by communicating, and
we communicate by acting. Communicative impacting involves restructuring of consciousness of the object. Restructuring can be focused, firstly, on quantitative expansion of the amount of knowledge about a certain subject (adding new information]. Secondly, it can be aimed at qualitative change of the universe of knowledge and the universe of beliefs (attitudes). Thirdly, it can change emphasis on links between the universe of knowledge and the universe of beliefs (attitudes] and the fields of needs and motives [4, p. 53-62].
From the point of view of the communication theory, the behavior of communicants in the process of communication pursues certain goals. Since the main goal in the process of communication is not to transmit information, but to initiate a "response" of the listener, to impact on him/ her, to get feedback, to overcome the protective barrier, which surrounds the person's mind, several communication strategies and tactics help to perform this communicative task. Strategic aim determines the choice of means and methods for its implementation. Therefore, the communicative strategy and communicative tactics are related as a genus and species. A strategy is rather a general framework, an outline of behavior, which may include deviations from the goal at certain stages. The most important characteristics of the strategy are focus, consistency, and interactivity. Focus means that the strategy has always a clear goal. Consistency means that the strategy is determined by multiple interrelated actions aimed at achieving this goal. Interactivity means that the strategy is not implemented, but is created in the process of achieving the goal. The theory of communication defines the communicative tactics as a set of practical moves in the actual process of communicative interaction. The communicative tactics considers the communicative process on a smaller scale than the communicative strategy. It does not relate to the communicative goal, but to a set of individual communicative intentions. The selection of communicative tactics is influenced by the personality type of the speaker, the types of interlocutors, the situations in which the communication takes place, the time limit, etc. For example, knowing the styles and norms of the Russian literary language, proper usage of its means helps a person to feel comfortable in various communicative situations.
Professional communication is a manageable communication. It should be managed only by a professional. To establish a professional picture of the world and to develop skills to efficiently impact on the interlocutor, Russian and foreign students receive various types of communicative tasks. Later, they should analyze their results in detail in order to determine how communication went, whether there was a communication act or not, and why it got unsuccessful. As a rule, students summarize the following: success of interpersonal communication depends largely on whether the person, who impacts, can get the communication process to the level of interaction, equal exchange of information, and dialogue of equal interlocu-
tors. From the first minutes of professional communication it is important to win over the interlocutor, to establish his/her trust, and then to control the phases of communicative activity. Based on their own experience, students conclude that in the communicative act it is important to be able to adapt to the interlocutor, to hear and to listen. It is important to clearly indicate their own communicative intent, which helps with the interaction of interlocutors; to use body language. Various behavior patterns identified in the process of learning and extracurricular activities (when performing practical tasks] contribute to development of professional competence, ensure that the subjects of communication adequately perceive the current situation, and ensure their constructive behavior and constructive attitude in the dialogue. For example, foreign students, who participate in the speaking club at the University, shared the following observations: "It's good that Russian words are more or less pronounced the same way they are spelled, with some exceptions, like "moloko" (milk], which is pronounced "malako" (but not in the north of Russia, where they retain the unstressed "o"]. But then again there are certain things in the Russian language that fascinate me. For example, in most cases you pronounce a word differently when its number is more than five: for example, "odin stul" (one chair], "dva stula" (two chairs], etc. And then "pyat stulyev" (five chairs]. I would never understand why."
Considering the problems of the communicative impacting and interaction, we face the issue of understanding: success of communication doesn't depend only on the language competence of interlocutors, but also on their outlook and world view. Ignorance of the facts of reality, which support the discourse, leads to misunderstanding, communicative failures. Language is at the same time a means of communication, and the main barrier on the way to understanding and the dialogue of civilizations. One of the Russian-speaking students of the Institute of Foreign Languages, a member of the speaking club, told the following about her studies in Norway: "A communication barrier is a combination of external and internal reasons and phenomena, which interfere with the effective communication or completely block it. In simpler terms, this is what prevents us from communicating. This may include both, intellectual characteristics, knowledge, emotional, psychological characteristics of the human mind, as well as social, political, professional, religious differences, etc. I am not affected by social, political, professional, religious, emotional factors. It is difficult to mislead me when communicating or meeting new people, so I can say that the language barrier is the only communicative barrier for me."
One of the communication platforms that unite different nations is profession, including education in terms of the chosen specialization. The speaking club at Pitirim Sorokin Syktyvkar State University was established to promote the Russian language and culture as essential elements
of the world civilization, to support programs for learning Russian as a foreign language, to develop the intercultural dialogue and to reinforce understanding between Russian and foreign students from near-abroad and far-abroad countries.
The activities of this speaking club are consistent and multifunctional. It is a creative and communicative platform, which creates conditions for scientific discussions and informal communication between different cultures. It is an educational and instructional system that allows a person to effectively study the Russian language and culture on the basis of progressive methods and programs, festivals and forums, where we use games that are supported by two main principles: the impact of footage and fascination. Fascination promotes concentration and better memorization of the material. "The purpose of the game is not practical, which is usually considered in practical non-player terms, not in the activity itself regardless of its result, but in the diverse experiences that are significant for the player, the sides of reality" [5, p. 240]. It is well known that things, which are experienced emotionally, are better remembered. As an example, we will describe a game. The participants receive small cards, which offer to make up a sentence with each word form. First of all, future teachers, members of the speaking club, have questions about the rules of the game. For example, which card should be shown, as there are several cards (by the number of cases] with one image? Do we have to choose the card that matches the sentence? We will try to answer these questions with a specific example. We will take the card "City", which has the nominative case ("This is my favorite..."], the genitive case ("Where did you come from?.."], the dative case ("Can you tell me how to get to..."], the accusative case ("Where are you going?.."], the instrumental case ("Our house is next to..."] and the prepositional case ("Where were you yesterday?.."]. Therefore, each word is shown on six cards. This complicates significantly the work of a future teacher: he/she must pay attention not only to the compliance of the picture, but also to the compliance of the word form with the sentence. If, for example, the sentence "Where are you going?" is shown, then a future teacher of the Institute of Foreign Languages should choose a card with any word in the accusative case. Therefore, he/she becomes the most active and responsible participant of the game: he/she must be the first to determine the correct form of the word. However, he/she has a hint: the color of the correct word form corresponds to the color of the sentence. A future teacher and a foreign student have the opportunity to observe again and again — not passively, but actively, in action, in the game — the colored image of the word form combined with the visual image of the object, on the one hand, and the image of the situation created by the sentence, on the other hand. Dialogues and polylogues are made up almost at each lesson, which develops tolerance of the foreign students to the Russian society, creates interest
to the Russian language, traditions, and folk customs, activates the learning process, creates a strong motivational base for studying the Russian culture.
The speaking club of Syktyvkar State University focuses on the following topics: the Russian Language, Culture and Art, Science and Education, the Modern Russia. Along with traditional resources of the University library with its text books and course handbooks, Russian dictionaries, reference books, encyclopedias, fine literature, and books on Russian history, culture and art, members of the speaking club are also offered access to multiple possibilities of the media library of audio, video, and media content. This includes multimedia educational publications of Russian as a foreign language and country study, digital educational programs of the Russian language for different levels, classics of the Russian cinematography and modern Russian movies; digital reference books and dictionaries, video tours, free access to Internet resources.
Activities of the speaking club can be split into three main areas: creative, communicative, and educational.
The creative area covers the arrangement of educational activities, such as:
— exhibitions;
— movie nights with film screening and discussion;
— theme nights dedicated to Russian culture, literature, cinematography, sport, etc.;
— art contests, competitions, and contests of the Russian language and country study;
— celebrations dedicated to the Russian language and culture, including memorable days;
— facilitation of activities of expat communities, community associations, folk groups and other communities, promoting Russian culture;
— music nights;
— tours in the Komi Republic.
The communicative area covers the facilitation of scientific, educational, and informal intercultural communication. This includes:
— topic discussion club for students;
— academic contest of Russian as a foreign language;
— theme nights for users of various categories;
— conferences and topic discussions;
— theme-specific presentations;
— meetings with people of interest, artists, public figures of Russia and the Komi Republic;
— scientific conferences and seminars;
— official meetings on the issues of teaching Russian as a foreign language.
The educational area of the speaking club covers:
— individual and unsupervised learning activities of foreign students, interns, and attendees of short educational programs;
— unsupervised and group assignments involving multimedia content, study of literature classics;
— methodological assistance in selecting educational books, scientific and reference materials on Russian as a foreign language.
Students of Pitirim Sorokin Syktyvkar State University participate in the activities of the speaking club benefiting from an opportunity to gain experience as teachers. In particular, Russian students offer listening comprehension lessons that consist of three parts.
In the first part, they prepare the foreign students for verbal perception and understanding of a text, give linguistics and linguistic-related country study comments, provide connotation of words essential for understanding of the text to be listened to. Also the first part of the lesson consists of interactive tasks to activate and enrich the vocabulary of foreign students, phonetic tasks for preparation for listening to words and word combinations different in their phonetics and rhythmics, required for an adequate perception of the audio.
The second part is dedicated to perceiving and understanding the audio text. At the first lessons, presentation of the audio is accompanied by visual aid in the form of pictures, art reproductions. At further lessons audio is embedded into video. As a result, audio perception is supported by visuals.
The final third part of the speaking club lessons contains interactive tests aimed at checking the amount of audio text perceived and correctly understood by the foreign students. If the test results are not satisfactory, the future teachers give a second chance to the foreign students to listen to the audio and do the test again.
Listening comprehension is not the only type of lessons offered by the future teachers. At the Russian Federation lessons, foreign students learn about the modern Russia, old and new history of Moscow, world heritage sites.
Cultural and educational environment has an impact on the learning process and a direct correlation with the success and skills of future teachers, when they participate (work with] in the speaking club with foreign students.
Therefore, cultural and educational environment, which contributes to personal development, becomes a pedagogical condition for intensification of students' training. It consists of:
1] activation of the student's personal position in terms of the teaching and educational process;
2] informational and ethnocultural support in terms of the personal interaction;
3] advantageous and humane use of the national peculiarities;
4] focus on the full value of the dialogue in terms of the recreational and leisure activities.
All of the aforementioned was considered in the projects implemented together with the foreign students: "The Native Language as a Living Link Through Times", "Skrepka", a Multinational Chastushka Festival, a book event "ProChitay", a contest "Journal of Friendship", a photo contest "Dialogues About Russia", an ethnic forum "We are Russians", a Festival of Nations, "Slavic Lyre", contest "Pushkin's places in Moscow through the eyes of a foreigner", nomination "Pushkin to Students".
Another surprising fact emerged in the process of communication with both, Russian and foreign students. In the age of the Internet, which gives the opportunity to constantly carry out multidirectional communication with almost the entire world, to receive the most diverse information, we can observe severe shortage of knowledge of people about different nations, and in many cases, reluctance to receive such information. First of all, it is worth mentioning the peoples, which were united in one country — the Soviet Union — a few years ago. Even Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, who are, in a sense, related to each other, find it difficult today to tell about their similar and distinguishing features. Even a deeper gap lies between the Russian and Caucasian, and Central Asian peoples. And what about the peoples who were not part of the Soviet Union?! Such ignorance leads to misunderstanding, to ethnic hatred. Active participation in the speaking club and other social, cultural and sports programs and projects of Pitirim Sorokin Syktyvkar State University, living in the dormitories together with Russian-speaking students, having wide opportunities for participation in international inter-university cooperation create a strong motivational basis for foreign students to learn the Russian language at intermediate and advanced levels, and, therefore, to proactively master the Russian culture.
One of the advantages of a regional university located in the Russian republic is that the Russian-speaking environment is not dominant. A foreign student is included in multilingual communication, which contributes to his/her psychological emancipation, makes it possible to feel one of many, to act beyond his national groups. On the other hand, during various national holidays and events, student conferences, forums and festivals, outdoor events, Pitirim Sorokin Syktyvkar State University gives the students an opportunity to present their country, people, life style and traditions, which also helps to overcome international barriers.
Development of leadership skills of foreign students, finding their talents and making them project leaders and experts is another way to overcome international barriers, to contribute to the professional development in the chosen field of knowledge. Education in a Russian university results in one belief developed on the basis of experience of foreign students: in interpersonal and inter-ethnic communication it is impor-
tant to be able to adapt to the interlocutor, to listen and to hear. Finding solutions to various communicative tasks at different platforms, identifying patterns of behavior in different situations in terms of the learning process and extracurricular activities, developing the ability to effectively manage the communication process and to achieve its goals contribute to development of professional competence of future teachers, give them a good understanding of the situation, provide them with constructive behavior and a constructive position in the dialogue, the ability to position themselves and succeed in profession.
Educational environment of the speaking club for foreign students is based on a systematic and active approach. It "means developing students' competence, and it is conveyed through activities (educational, cognitive, communicative, etc.], which consist of several phases: stimulating and motivational, analytical and synthetic, and executive; each of the phases consists of actions and operations, which precede by needs, motives, and problem statement" [6, p. 149]. Here, students are considered as subjects of the activities, who "address problems (not necessarily linguistic] under certain conditions, in a certain situation, in a certain area of activities" [7, p. 8].
Another advantage is that foreign students study in a university of a Russian national republic. This is not an exclusively Russian environment. Foreign students are exposed to a multilingual communication that promotes their psychological emancipation, gives them an opportunity to feel that they belong with the many. And the linguistic environment can be further expanded: for instance, every year the University hosts a Republic French Song Contest. Besides, teachers from American universities come here under the Fulbright scholarship program to participate in scientific seminars in English together with future teachers. These events help to enhance the collaboration and creative setting for communication between teachers, pupils, and students.
Active open dialogue of cultures is effectively used in teaching Russian as a foreign language. Prominent Russian methodologist E.Passov suggests that inclusion of a student into the dialogue of cultures is the main educational value of foreign language study, and cultural dialogue is its purpose [8, p. 82].
Conclusion
Joint creative activities of Russian and foreign students in a Russian educational institution successfully addresses a number of issues: it facilitates an efficient verbal communication with foreign students, provides a pedagogical experience for future teachers, contributes to their professional speech culture, future pedagogical vigilance, multicultural pedagogical tact, development of vocational and information technology, methodology of communication, which is the basic mechanism of devel-
opment of the human as a person and it is also a means of influence on personality. Active work with foreign students allowed them to quickly learn and start using new vocabulary; not to get tired while maintaining a high level of concentration for a long time. They feel more comfortable in everyday life, because additional classes help them in the shortest possible time to memorize the words and phrases necessary to survive in a foreign language environment. Engagement of foreign students and future teachers into a successful interpersonal and intercultural communication makes the speaking club a powerful tool for their self-fulfillment and helps them to reach the limits of mutual adaptation.
Comprehensive engagement into Russian culture, establishment of communicative competence and professional world view are an essential condition for integration of foreign students in Russia. At the same time, regular student communication hosted by the speaking club and continuous pedagogical practical work intensify the educational process, increase the engagement level, and expand the professional competence of future specialists, which contributes to successful achievement of the educational goal, popularization of the Russian language and culture.
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