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DOI: 10.12731/2218-7405-2013-8-26
PSYCHOLINGUISTIC APPROACH TO FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING
Dobrova V.V.
The study of verbal behavior in a foreign language with the complex of methods of different sciences is the up-to-date task of scientific knowledge. The study of the ability to learn foreign languages is conducted with the help of psycholinguistic methods on the basis of contracted forms of communication, considering individual characteristics of speakers as well as level of their language culture, semantics and elements of their speech. The carried empirical study allows to say that there is the dependence of individual characteristics, motivation of communication, communicative skills of participants of communication and presence of various semantic and syntactic types of contracted forms in the dialogue.
Key words: individual characteristics of person, speech analyses, contracted form of communication, foreign language.
ПСИХОЛИНГВИСТИЧЕСКИЙ ПОДХОД К ОБУЧЕНИЮ ИНОСТРАННЫМ ЯЗЫКАМ
Доброва В.В.
Изучение речевого поведения человека на иностранном языке с использованием комплекса методов различных наук является актуальной задачей современного научного познания. Исследование способности к изучению иностранных языков проводится с использованием методов психолингвистики на основе сокращенных форм общения, с учетом
личностных особенностей общающихся, а также языковой культуры, семантики и элементов речи говорящих. Проведенное исследование позволило утверждать, что существует зависимость между личностными характеристиками, коммуникативными способностями участников диалога, мотивацией общения и появлением в структуре диалога на иностранном языке различных типов сокращенных высказываний.
Ключевые слова: личностные особенности, речевое общение, сокращенные формы общения, иностранный язык.
Foreign language teachers today come across difficulties of not only the choice of materials, methods and means of education, but also the difficulties of much higher importance, namely the choice of approach to learning. For many centuries, teachers and methodologists have been looking for the best effective approach to teaching foreign languages, but have not yet come to consensus. Today, the trend to re-orient science to the study of psychic nature of human intellectual activity and, therefore, to strengthen the role of the "human component" leads researchers to realize the importance of a comprehensive study of communicating and speaking human beings. It means "language person" becomes an integral object of a number of sciences. In particular, the use of methods of psychology and linguistics gives a new look to a communicating personality, the verbal behavior in the communication process, broadens the scope of only linguistic or just psychological approaches to learning foreign languages. The study of personal behavior and activity using combined methods of empirical approaches of the various sciences, is an up-to-date task of modern scientific knowledge and social practice.
The importance of such psycholinguistic studies of speech behavior of the individual is determined by several factors: first, the increasing role of the individual in modern society, and hence the increasing emphasis on its characteristics, reflected in various activities and determining their effectiveness (in particular, in the activities
on a foreign language); second, the realization of the importance of communication, which is basic for the development of psychological processes, states and properties of the person, special and necessary way of life of the individual and society as a whole; and third, the absence of thorough studies of the relationship of structure, elements and characteristics of speech as means of communication, in particular the speech utterances, and the speaker's individual characteristics.
It is clear that verbal behavior in any language is a unique individual speech performance of personality and depends on its various characteristics, so it makes the study of personality, expressed in the language and through the language, i.e. language personality with all the linguistic and psychological characteristics, especially important. The more so that the interest to the study of language personality is increasing in psychology and linguistics.
The study of characteristics of verbal communication has for a long time been the subject of special studies of psychologists (G.M. Andreeva, A.A. Bodalev, A.A. Leontiev). In verbal communication one can find all the psychological patterns of communication, that explains the great research interest. Empirical studies show that the main kind of verbal behavior that reflects the personality characteristics of the speaker, as well as the specific features of an individual as a representative of national culture and language, is the spoken language in a dialogue form. However, the study of real dialogue structures with the features and elements of the speaker's speech, and not only semantics, practically does not occur in the current psychological studies.
In real-verbal communication one can find full spoken speech forms as well as rather specific in terms of psycholinguistic analysis significantly contracted elements. It is clear that these phrases do not often make sense out of the context of the dialogue discourse, but in real communication they have significant semantic load and are thus an important socio-psychological component of interpersonal communication.
Studying the dialogue discourse in a foreign language one can see a large
number of such contracted (short) forms that can be described as reactive monorheme statements that, in fact, are contracted in form brief verbal responses of the conversation participants, in comparison to full theme statements of the classical type. However, from the point of view of the semantic fullness such statements are sufficient. Moreover, taking into account the fact that the speech activity is directly related to the individual and personal characteristics of the person involved in the process of interpersonal communication, monorhemes can be considered as a special reactive form of verbal behavior in the interpersonal communication.
The short-form statement from the point of view of the semantic fullness is sufficient because it contains the necessary information for the interlocutor. Dialogue phrases are related as "stimulus - response", which means that each source phrase presupposes the second response phrase and etc., and the structure and semantics of the first initiating phrase determines the form and content of the second one. Analyses of the structure of question-answer dialogues of spoken English suggests that all responses are positioned statements of communication units, which form one complex with previous interrogative sentences that explains the interest to the analysis of not only reactive, but also interrogative, stimulating phrases in the functional and semantic aspects.
Mutual understanding between people is achieved owing to how the speaker and the listener can distinguish between the original context, the theme, and the new included member, rheme, that is the part of each sentence as the most important mechanism of verbal communication. In colloquial speech, there are such statements, in which the theme is practically absent. In English linguistics such statements are known as monorhemes, i.e. consisting of a single rhyme. They appear as a part of the response phrase of a dialogue unit and are presupposed by the questioning phrasestimulus and the situation itself.
Proficiency in the language requires both adequate understanding and the active use of monorhemes in spoken speech, so their study on the material of spoken English is of special theoretical and practical interest among linguists. In psychology
monorhemes have not been studied as they were considered to be purely linguistic units. Taking into account the fact that the speech activity is directly related to the individual and the personal characteristics of the person involved in the process of interpersonal communication (dialogue), we consider monorheme as a specific form of verbal behavior in the interpersonal communication.
Since verbal behavior is a purely personal speech performance, so far it is naturally associated with the personal, national, social characteristics of the conversation participants. Any act of speech should be related to the personally of the speaker, or, in other words, any dialogue contributes to actualization of personal characteristics of the participants, its personality, its psychological characteristics are shown in the dialogue [1,190], determine its subject and development. According to S.A. Agapova, personal characteristics of the participants of the speech (dialogue) communication represent "combination of individual, social, national, cultural and human characteristics" [2, 192].
Existing in a particular ethnic group, the personality has the traits of a particular type of national language culture, which affects to some extent the form of communication, as well as its effectiveness. Being in the "native" language environment, a person can easily communicate in any situation, in the choice of forms and means of communication. On the other hand, getting in a foreign language environment, i.e. communicating in a foreign language, one has the difficulties in the selection of language means and forms, but with the difference of communicative and meaningful communication plan as well.
Therefore, one of the communication effectiveness criteria is the similar understanding of reality, awareness of cultural identity of communication, as well as the knowledge of language means.
However, it is clear that effective communication depends not only on the knowledge of its means, i.e. the language, or of the speaker's belonging to the language environment. One of the most important success factor is the individual speaker's personality characteristics. Thus, according to the typology of Jung,
extroverts and introverts behave differently in the situations of communication. In general, the typology of Jung most fully describes the social and psychological characteristics in the parameters of 8 psychological types, depending on the settings of the human psyche and psychological functions. The use of this typology is promising, because it has the most common personality characteristics associated with the process of interaction with the reality, the social side of a person's behavior that characterizes the individual as a subject of communication.
The effectiveness of communication, to a certain extent, is the result of a combination of communication motives (realized in the motivation to succeed and the motivation of affiliation), direction of communication and communicative skills that characterize a person in the process of communication.
To study the behavior of rheme utterances in real dialogues we conducted a special empirical study, part of which was a described psycholinguistic experiment. The experiment was conducted among students of higher educational institutions of Russia and Britain, divided into groups according to the level of English proficiency: group I - people with low level of language proficiency, Group A - those with high level of proficiency (native language - Russian) , group B - those with high level of language culture (native language - English.) In these groups personal characteristics of individuals and reactive dialogue components (monorhemes) were studied.
In order to describe the characteristics of the individual as a subject of communication we chose a questionnaire designed by J.Keirsey based on the concept of Jung's psychological types as the main diagnostic method for determining psychological portraits. In the Russian-speaking groups we additionally used psychodiagnostic questionnaires that solve the problem of identifying personal characteristics of the subject of rheme statements in more detail and allowed to determine the motivation of affiliation (A.Mehrabian's questionnaire), motivation to succeed and failure avoidance (T.Ellers' questionnaire), and well as communicative and organizational skills.
A comparative analysis of the three groups suggests that direct answers are most often heard in the dialogue, and an inadequate response is the least likely, although it should be noted that the ratio of the reactive phrases in the act of communication among members of the three groups are not the same. Thus, representatives of groups B and I, representing the opposite stages of language acquisition, or levels of language culture, are significantly different in the presence of direct and indirect responses in the act of communication, which suggests the interrelation of language culture and the structural and semantic features of contracted forms of communication (monorhemes) in direct and indirect response (Table 1).
Table 1
The distribution of members of the three groups according to the reacting component of dialogue
Group Direct answers Indirect answers Inadequate answers
Group В 44,75 34,65 20,59
Group А 49,33 28,63 22,04
Group I 55,53 25,61 18,86
Comparative analysis of the samples from the three groups showed that in all types of groups there are all temper types, but their distribution is not the same. However, despite the observed specificity of the personal characteristics of the groups, there is a stable relationship between the parameters of extraversion and the indirect responses, introversion and the direct answers in the act of communication, and the lack of an adequate response is directly related to the parameter of impulsivity.
Additional psychological examination revealed that the studied groups with different levels of language culture (data of Russian-speaking groups A and I), are significantly different in the parameter of motivation to succeed. For example, in group A the appearance of indirect responses associated with the motivation to
succeed, and the fear of rejection is directly correlated with the appearance of direct answers (Table 2).
Table 2
Correlation of monorhymes and the personal characteristics of members
of Group A
Methods Parameters Keirsey Ellers COS-2 Mehrabian
E I P J Desire to risk Desire for self-protection Communicative skills Organizational skills Motivation to succeed Fear of rejection
Ellers Desire to risk 0,123 -0,123 -0,422* 0,422*
Desire for self-protection 0,501* -0,501* 0,421* -0,421*
COS-2 Communicative skills 0,654* -0,654* -0,223 0,223 0,267 0,221
Organizational skills 0,212 -0,212 -0,465* 0,465* 0,544* 0,120
Mehrabian Motivation to succeed 0,567* -0,567* -0,193 0,193 -0,039 0,242 0,539* 0,285
Fear of rejection -0,558* 0,558* -0,125 0,125 0,201 -0,375 -0,478* -0,104
Reactive component Direct response -0,442* 0,442* -0,259 0,259 0,078 -0,285 -0,037 -0,116 0,111 0,409*
Indirect responce 0,542* -0,542* -0,180 0,180 0,336 0,194 0,325 0,292 0,097 0,265
Inadequate answer -0,037 0,037 0,515* -0,515* -0,458* 0,144 -0,304 -0,172 0,033 0,219
* (p < 0, 4)
In group I, indirect responses are associated with developed organizational skills and the motivation to succeed, and direct answers correlate negatively with the developed organizational skills and the risk of rejection (Table 3).
Table 3
Correlation of monorhymes and the personal characteristics of members of
Group I
Methods Parameters Keirsey Ellers COS-2 Mehrabian
E I P J Desire to risk Desire for self-protection Communicative skills Organizational skills Motivation to succeed Fear of rejection
Ellers Desire to risk 0,225 -0,225 -0,523* 0,523*
Desire for self-protection 0,411* -0,411* 0,180 -0,180
COS-2 Communicative skills 0,577* -0,577* -0,046 0,046 0,092 0,531*
Organizational skills 0,505* -0,505* -0,177 0,177 0,207 0,339
Mehrabian Motivation to succeed 0,541* -0,541* -0,012 0,012 0,150 0,187 0,511* 0,334
Fear of rejection -0,551* 0,551* 0,171 -0,171 -0,126 -0,329 -0,499* -0,361
Reactive component Direct response -0,462* 0,462* -0,001 0,001 0,027 -0,135 -0,272 -0,484* -0,352 0,268
Indirect responce 0,713* -0,713* -0,375 0,375 0,202 0,186 0,366 0,446* 0,343 -0,332
Inadequate answer -0,167 0,167 0,448* -0,448* -0,292 -0,001 -0,020 0,193 0,121 -0,001
* (p < 0,4)
As for the desire for self-protection and to risk, the representatives of both groups have mean values (Table 4). The desire for self-protection in both groups has a negative correlation with the fear of rejection.
Table 4
The distribution of members of the three groups according to the level of motivation to succees and to avoid failures
Group Desire to risk Desire for self-protection
Hihg Mid Low High Mid Low
Group A 64,52 35,48 0 9,68 67,74 22,57
Group I 21,82 74,55 3,64 16,36 72,73 10,91
Speaking of communication and organizational skills, it should be noted that representatives of the group A have much higher levels of communicative and organizational skills, as opposed to members of the group I, having middle level of
these parameters. At that the data on communicative skills have significant differences. The obtained data prove that the level of language culture of the groups representatives is determined by the level of communicative skills. The data of correlation analysis of all groups suggest that the tendency of communicative skills to correlate positively with the motivation to succeed, and to correlate negatively with the fear of being rejected (Table 2,3).
Comparative analysis of the affiliation data shows that all members of the group A and the majority of the group I have an average level of both the motivation to succeed and the fear of being rejected by others. According to this parameter there is no important difference. As for the correlation analysis, it showed that in group A the fear of rejection correlates positively with the presence of direct answers, and in group I the motivation to suceed has a positive correlation with the presence of indirect responses and negative correlation - with the presence of direct answers (Table 2, 3).
The data obtained in all experimental groups suggest that although the three chosen groups differ in the types of temperament, motivation to succeed, affiliation motivation, direction and communicative skills, it is possible to identify some general trends of the influence of these characteristics on the particular use of the contracted forms of speech dialogue in real communication.
The conducted empirical study showed that the characteristics of the speech behavior of the representatives of the three groups are significantly different from each other in the distribution of semantic and syntactic types of monorhemes, depending on the intensity and structure of the personal characteristics. The results of the correlation analysis also revealed a significant relationship between the level of language culture and the types of monorhemes of the conversation participants.
The data of this study allow to state that there is a definite relationship between personal characteristics (extroversion, introversion, impulsivity, judgment), motivation of communication, communicative skills of the conversation participants- on the one
hand, and the presence of different semantic and syntactic types of contracted ( monorheme) statements in the dialogue - on the other.
Judging by the results of the psycholinguistic experiments, we can confidently say that the characteristics of verbal communication (in particular, the type and frequency of use of monorhemes as short responce phrases in the dialogue) is determined not only by the level of language culture, but also the personal characteristics of the speakers. The results obtained in this experiment suggest that the structural and semantic features of such little studied in psychology form of verbal dialogue as monorheme statements depend both on the level of language culture and the personality characteristics of the dialogue participants.
The suggested psycholinguistic approach offers the methodology for further study of the speech behavior of the person in a foreign language. Based on these factors, we can say that the directions for further work could be: the study of verbal behavior based on gender, age, professional affiliation, etc. From the point of view of the suggested conceptual apparatus it is especially promising to study other components of verbal communication in a foreign language, such as indirect speech acts, greetings and exclamations.
References
1. Leontiev A. Fundamentals of psycholinguistics. Moscow: Smysl, 2003.
288 p.
2. Agapova S. Fundamentals of interpersonal and intercultural communication. Rostov-on-Don: Phoenix, 2004. 288 p.
Список литературы
1. Леонтьев А.А. Основы психолингвистики. М.: Смысл, 2003. 288 с.
2. Агапова С.А. Основы межличностной и межкультурной коммуникации. Ростов-на Дону: Феникс, 2004. 288 с.
DATA ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dobrova Victoria Vadimovna, Head of Department of Foreign Languages, candidate of psychology
Samara State Technical University
244, Molodogvardeyskaya Str., Samara, 443100, Russia
E-mail: victoria_dob@mail. ru
ДАННЫЕ ОБ АВТОРЕ
Доброва Виктория Вадимовна, зав.кафедрой иностранных языков, кандидат психологических наук, доцент
Самарский государственный технический университет ул. Молодогвардейская, 244, г. Самара, 443100, Россия E-mail: victoria_dob@mail. ru
