CC BY
206
UDC 372.881.1
DOI 10.17223/19996195/29/11
STUDENT'S LINGUISTIC PERSONALITY AND MULTICULTURAL SELF-ORGANIZATION THROUGH FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING
E.A. Isaev
Abstract. The article traces the features of linguistic personality's formation in the context of globalization processes in the world. Multicultural self-organization is notable for students' ability to build up the dialogue of cultures in their professional occupation and considered to be a triune person's education, arising as the result of integration of cross-cultural linguistic personality's sphere, global attitude to foreign culture and cultural self-determination. The inclusion of the term "linguistic personality" in the process of foreign language teaching enables integrating the synergetic capabilities of linguistic training to arise the dynamics of multicultural self-organization, which provides the humanization of national and language relationship. The author considers the process of foreign language teaching as the mechanism, which enables to mobilize and structure the qualities of linguistic personality. The study shows intercultural approach as the main one; within it one can use the toolkit of activities, which help to implement the idea of multicultural self-organization of student's linguistic personality in foreign language teaching. Keywords: globalization; integration; student's linguistic personality; multicultural self-organization; foreign language teaching; intercultural approach; toolkit of techniques; activities.
Introduction
Modern society is undergoing the process of globalization, the integration of Russia into global political, socio-economic community. These trends lead to the increase of professional intercultural communication, to the elimination of national boundaries, to the emergence of cultural unification, and also to the emergence of the united multicultural environment. The country's education system, which updates all its subcomponents, sharply reacts to the changes. According to normative documents (the "Law on Education", "National Doctrine of Education until 2025", State Program "The Development of Education for the years of 2013-2020", FSES (FGOS) of the third generation), modern society needs highly qualified, competitive graduates who can speak foreign languages, who are ready to participate in intercultural communication, showing the competence to organize dialogue of cultures [1]. It leads to the necessity of the development of student's linguistic personality, multicultural self-organization in the educational process.
Linguistic Personality: Theoretical Background
Philosophy considers personality as an internal unity with social qualities, which are developed in the process of historically concrete occupation.
This unity also includes values focused on the reproduction, recreation, self-support and the maintenance of the world. The problem of the personality in philosophy is first of all a question of human's place in the world, "what can a human become, if he or she is able to make him- or herself, develop his or her own life" (A. Gramshi) [2. P. 43]. Psychology worked out the idea about the multiplicity of existence forms of a personality as person's system quality, a subject of self-awareness (I.S. Kon, S.G. Yakobson), communication (A.A. Bodalev, G. Mid), and an objective activity (A.G. Asmolov, P.I. Zinchenko, D.A. Leontiev). Linguistic studies finding out "human factor" in language lead to the concept of "linguistic personality". This concept has been studied for the last thirty years; it was represented for the first time by V.V. Vinogradov, who considered linguistic personality as individuality; although some notions on this question we can find in the works of linguists of the XIX-XX centuries linguists.
Today the appeal to the theory of linguistic personality is caused by the humanization of all sciences. Special attention to the human, his / her problems make homo loquens the main object of study in modern linguistics. It is impossible to cognize the language itself not referring to its creator, speaker, user, i.e. to the human, to the concrete linguistic personality. By the way, linguistic personality is considered to be "not the part of personality's multifaceted understanding, but the kind of its full presentation including psychic, social, ethic and other components refracted through its language and discourse" [3. P. 7].
In the Russian science of language the problem of linguistic personality was investigated by Yu.N. Karaulov. Linguodidactic approach to linguistic personality is ascended to G.I. Bogin's ideas. Generally, the analysis of the works shows, that this concept is understood as 1) an ability of the speaker of relationship and conscious activity to take part in the communication; 2) a human, who carries out the totality of language means in the speech. We think, that it is necessary to use an integrate view on the personality as the subject of multicultural interaction. Such personality has got conscious sensibility, accepts other cultures with their texts, speakers, values of national culture as his / her wn, interrelates itself and its nation. The personality works out its own vector of the activity during the interaction with multicultural milieu; the objective activity is expressed in the methods of the relationship with micro- and macro environment of culture as "the world of impersonate values" (N.Z. Chavchavadze) [4. P. 25]. So, in today's more and more interconnected world the linguistic personality requires its own multicultural self-organization, the ability to begin the dialogue of cultures.
As we know self-organization is a process by which the internal dynamics of a system generate system-wide patterns. G.H. Eoyang points out three conditions for self-organizing in human systems. They are significant difference, container and transforming exchange [5. P. 11]. Multicultural
self-organization is a process of self-contained mobilization and structuring of abilities, skills, and qualities by linguistic personality to make dialogue of cultures professionally. In terms of the activity multicultural self-organization of linguistic personality requires to be studied as "absolute sequence of different dynamic processes (self-observation, self-determination, self-analysis, self-regulation, self-motivation), when the restricting of the components of the system, the introduction of new elements for a better condition are required under the influence of different circumstances" [6. P. 154]. In terms of the result multicultural self-organization of linguistic personality is a quality, which is expressed in the development of cross-cultural sphere of linguistic personality, global attitude to culture and its cultural self-determination.
The implementation of the concept "linguistic personality" in the process of foreign language teaching leads to the appearance of such concepts as "secondary linguistic personality" (I.I. Khaleeva [7], N.D. Galskova, N.I. Ger [8]), "cultural and linguistic personality" (V.P. Furmanova) [9], "multicultural linguistic personality" (V.V. Safonova) [10], "ethnic linguistic personality" (E.S. Shoisoronova) [11]. The researchers add to this paradigm some other notions: "communicative personality" (I.V. Sentenberg) [12], "vocabulary personality" (V.I. Karasik) [13], "emotional linguistic personality" (V.I. Sha-khovski) [14] etc. We, following the ideas of V.N. Kartash-ova, take the attitude, that "all interpretations in a varying degree draw attention to linguistic personality that studies a foreign language in the modern multicultural milieu" [15. P. 13], which develops ideas and personal qualities, which are necessary for the communication with people of different nations and for creative realization of future professional activity. As far as from the point of synergetic view self-organization is a self-organizing system in the culture, the ability to the cognition, reflection, self-reflection, manufacture of attitudes and also self-determination in the variety of cultures is also customary for linguistic personality.
Foreign Language and Multicultural Self-Organization
Foreign language teaching is a special didactic mechanism, which provides multicultural self-organization. Foreign language teaching has a big educational opportunity for the harmonization of intercultural communication, making the dialogue of cultures, the development of global thinking and the ability to cultural self-determination - the elaboration of internal attitude to people, values and the multicultural world in the whole. Only learning a foreign language leads to the human's development through the acquisition of a language as the means of informational exchange with the world for the purpose of the world's and self-transformation in the process of self-organization. This process refers to the human and his or her culture and is
directed to the trainee's personality (M.M. Bakhtin), where language "plays not only the role of science transmission, but the means of intellectual activity" (V.P. Zinchenko). Because of the necessity of humanization of intercultural communication the purpose of foreign language teaching is the development of a linguistic personality as a subject of intercultural interaction who obtained during the foreign language education a certain set of competences, ensuring a certain set of values, personal qualities, creative thinking, universal methods of the production of private intercultural world seeing.
Implementation of Intercultural Approach at Bunin Yelets State University
As a result, a certain set of techniques is necessary for achieving the goal. The methodological analysis proves that the implementation of intercultural approach provides the multicultural self-organization of student's linguistic personality, because according to C. Kramsch, culture "is always in the background, right from day one, ready to unsettle the good language learners when they expect it least, making evident the limitations of their hard-won communicative competence, challenging their ability to make sense of the world around them" [16. P. 11].
Nowadays, it is a widely known fact that teaching and learning a foreign language cannot be reduced to the direct teaching of linguistic skills like phonology, morphology, vocabulary, and syntax. The contemporary models of communicative competence show that there is much more to learning a language, and they include the vital component of cultural knowledge and awareness. In other words, to learn a language well it usually requires knowing something about the culture of that language [17].
Furthermore, culture is a very broad concept, so to get to know a given culture means to gain extensive knowledge. According to Z. Chlopek, clearly, if learners of English as a foreign language are to become successful intercultural communicators, it is essential to provide them with a thorough and systematic intercultural training, and not only with the culture of main English speaking countries. Students learning English as a foreign language will benefit by gaining solid knowledge of different world cultures, and they must also develop the ability to compare their native culture to other cultures, to evaluate critically and interpret the results of such comparisons, and to apply this knowledge successfully in both verbal and non-verbal communication, for both transactional and interactional purposes. Since "culture in language learning is not an expendable fifth skill, tacked on, so to speak, to the teaching of speaking, listening, reading, and writing" [16. P. 1], it is of paramount importance that cultures, not simply chosen cultural aspects, are dealt with during English as a foreign language lessons. Successful international communication is a sufficient cause for introducing the intercultural
approach into English as foreign language classrooms. However, there is another good reason. In many countries, there is still much intolerance towards and prejudice against other nations and cultures. Intensive intercultural education seems to be a good way to sow the seeds of tolerance, acceptance, understanding, and respect [18. P. 12-17].
It is important to mention, that both native (P.V. Sysoyev [19] etc.) and foreign (Z. Chlopek [18], C. Kramsch [16]) trainers and scientists are working out the toolkit for the implementation of intercultural approach. The practical training of students of the faculty of physics and engineering of Bunin Yelets State University has proved the efficiency of using some of the following activities [Ibid] for growing the dynamics of multicultural self-organization of student's linguistic personality. Three general groups are described below.
Group one (the aim is to help students look at their native culture at the conscious level and perceive it from the objective point of view):
Activity 1. The teacher writes the word CULTURE in the middle of the board and encourages students to brainstorm different associations they have with the term. All ideas are written down, followed by an in-class discussion of different cultural dimensions. Next, students work in groups and categorize different aspects of culture in the form of a mind map, ideally on big sheets of paper.
Activity 2. Students compare their observations and then try to step back and look at the collected data critically and reflectively from the objective point of view. This is followed by a whole-class discussion.
Activity 3. Students invent alternatives to existing manifestations of their own culture. They may come up with such ideas as: (1) instead of shaking hands with people, you might jump three times, and (2) nodding the head could mean "no" instead of "yes". Then, each group prepares a sketch showing new manifestations and the others must guess what they stand for.
Activity 4. Students are asked to discuss in groups the following question: "Which aspects of my own culture may seem weird to a foreigner?" Then, they read or listen to descriptions of their native culture given by representatives of other cultures, which can be printed out from the Internet or recorded from a TV program.
Group two (the aim is to widen learners' perspectives by getting them to know cultures of the English-speaking countries and to compare those cultures to their own):
Activity 1. The teacher prepares copies of excerpts from literature. Students read the excerpts in groups and decide what would be different if a given novel, short story, or poem was written by an author from their native culture.
Activity 2. The teacher hands out transcripts of real-life conversations copied from newspapers or magazines, printed out from the Internet, or rec-
orded from TV and transcribed. Next, the teacher explains how to analyze the text, both the content and the structure. Students work in groups and note down different cultural aspects and decide how much they resemble or differ from their own culture.
Activity 3. The teacher hands out copies of pictures showing people using various facial expressions and body language. Then the teacher provides them with a multiple-choice quiz, where for each picture only one description is correct.
Activity 4. In this activity students have a British Christmas party (or any other holiday party). Ideally, it should follow a lesson introducing Christmas customs observed in English-speaking countries. The teacher and students dress up and bring props for the party (e.g., Christmas ornaments, mistletoe, Christmas pudding, stockings, small gifts for others, a recording of the Queen's Christmas speech, and CDs with carols).
Group three (here students expand their cultural knowledge by learning about all cultures of the world):
Activity 1. The teacher prints out a few pieces of information about one culture. First, students brainstorm what they know about a given culture. Then, they divide into teams and each team member receives a different text. Next, learners regroup so that all students with the same text form a new group; they read their texts together, helping each other understand the content. Then they discuss what is new for them. Next the teacher tells students to return to their original teams and share what they have learned with the rest of their team so that at the end of the activity each team member has all the information.
Activity 2. The teacher hands out copies of the English version of a newspaper. In pairs or groups, students look at a story, ad, or other text and compare and contrast its structure and content with a similar text in their native newspapers.
Activity 3. Students watch a fragment of a film that vividly shows some aspect of a foreign culture, possibly leading to some kind of misunderstanding or conflict. Students work in groups and try to decide what the characters in the film or conversation should have known and done in order to avoid the conflict; all ideas are discussed in a class forum.
Activity 4. The teacher and students bring real-life objects connected with a particular culture into the classroom, such as figurines, foodstuffs, clothes, jewelry, masks, musical instruments, and tapes or CDs with traditional music. The class discusses the uses and symbolic importance of these cultural artifacts.
Conclusion
Multicultural self-organization is considered to be an important ability of the future specialist's linguistic personality. Just foreign language teach-
ing provides the synergetic process in the person's consciousness, acts as the means of the development of self-evaluation skills, self-presentation, and self-improvement. Student's linguistic personality is an active subject of the learning process, which independently creates and predicts the borders of his or her own future professional advancement.
The idea of synergetic formation of a linguistic personality is a brand new approach in the pedagogic experience and conceptual foresight of the results of specialists' professional development, also an important mechanism of the control of communicative competence. The pedagogic space of the institute amounts to the integral culturalogical environment, including different elements of communicational culture, behavior, culture of native and foreign languages etc., which act as subsystems of the pedagogical process of the specialist's development. The intercultural approach, which implements the principle of foreign language teaching "native culture - culture of learning foreign language - cultures of the world", provides and makes actual the internal person's abilities to increase the professionalism. So systematic intercultural training is a precondition for educating a new generation of young people who will not only tolerate, but also understand, accept, and respect people from different world cultures, will communicate with them successfully, and will learn from them through that communication.
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