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УДК 37:812
О. В. Перлова
канд. пед. наук, доц. каф. лингвистики и профессиональной коммуникации в области медиатехнологий ИМО и СПН МГЛУ e-mail: [email protected]
РОЛЬ ФИЛОЛОГИЧЕСКОГО ЧТЕНИЯ В ОБУЧЕНИИ ИНОСТРАННОМУ ЯЗЫКУ БУДУЩИХ СОЦИОЛОГОВ
В статье рассматривается роль филологического чтения в развитии профессионально-коммуникативных умений у студентов, обучающихся по направлению подготовки «Социология». Автор рассматривает значимость филологической интерпретации текстов студентами и способы применения полученных таким путем знаний для решения задач профессионально ориентированного характера.
Ключевые слова: филологическое чтение; аналитическо-справочные и информационно-медийные продукты; многоуровневая интерпретация текста; профессионально-коммуникативные задачи.
Perlova O. V.
PhD, Assistant Professor of Linguistics and Professional Communication Department in the Sphere of Media Technology, MSLU e-mail: [email protected]
THE ROLE OF LINGUISTIC AND CROSS CULTURAL READING IN TEACHING FOREIGN LANGUAGES TO FUTURE SOCIOLOGISTS
The article looks at the role of linguistic and cross cultural reading in developing professionally communicative skills of students training to become sociologists. The author considers the significance of linguistic and cross cultural interpretation in professional training of students and ways of applying the acquired knowledge for solving professionally oriented tasks.
Key words: linguistic and cross cultural reading; analytical, informational and media projects; a multi-levelled text interpretation; professionally communicative tasks.
Training for a profession of a sociologist presupposes acquiring thorough knowledge of socially related issues. To be efficient and successful in their work future sociologists should be aware of the technology aimed at conducting a sociological research, know how to collect and process sociological data and to be qualified in analyzing topical social problems and human relations at various levels, ranging from state to internal relations at different enterprises and institutions. The above mentioned
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needs determine the significance for future sociologists to study social tendencies of human life, which may vary from culture to culture.
Thus, the curriculum of modern languages for sociologists at our university covers the study of such socially important issues as: family institutions, housing, education, law, healthcare, environment issues , the political, economic and cultural life of different countries. This curriculum gives our students an opportunity to interpret sociocultural information describing various target communities, their historical background, literary treasury, mode of life and values. For that purpose linguistic and cross cultural reading may be useful.
As specialists in language teaching stress, linguistic and cross cultural reading studies "various aspects of the target culture and the native language through interpretation of written texts" [5, p. 5].
Thus, linguistic and cross cultural reading can be viewed as a professional component of university education and understood as deep, multi-levelled interpretation of sociocultural meanings and existential perceptions hidden in the text, the knowledge of which is necessary for a professional who aims to solve communicative tasks in the field of work. These professionally oriented tasks for a sociologist involve compiling analytical, informational and media projects (such as sociological articles and surveys).
To be able to solve the above mentioned professionally communicative tasks efficiently in the future, students should be trained to interpret texts of various functional styles (fiction, publicist, references, encyclopaedias, etc) which reveal different sociocultural aspects of life in the target community. Besides discussing the interpreted material, post reading tasks involve coming up with a professionally oriented project aimed at processing the acquired information through linguistic and cross-cultural reading and using it for work-related purposes.
The basis for linguistic and cross cultural reading is the text which contains information significant for sociocultural studies.
It is necessary to highlight, that in cognitive linguistics a text is defined as "the basic unit of communication in which a certain knowledge aspect is represented" [4, p. 55].
Taking it into consideration, we would like to stress, that future sociologists would be interested in interpreting texts which consider various social tendencies in the target communities, presenting an overview
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of problems that society faces and looking at possible ways of solving them constructively. They could also touch upon such issues as relations in various social groups, maintaining order and security in various countries and regions, information about prominent people who played a significant role in social development, etc.
It should be pointed out that authentic literary texts are a good source of sociocultural information if students need to look at life in the target community from the historical perspective. One of the reasons for it is that they "offer learners opportunities to develop critical reading skills that help them understand other cultures, thus acquiring new cultural frames of reference and a transformed world view" [6, p. 105]. It helps learners to "construct sociocultural images" [6, p. 108].
As for publicist texts, they provide data about current events in society and give an opportunity for students to study the sociological aspect.
Specialists in teaching the language of mass media have singled out the following particularities of the publicist texts, which are of interest to sociology students:
1) they are aimed at the mass audience;
2) they are notable for the scope and variety of topics which are touched upon in them;
3) they provide topical and timely information [2, p. 14].
Studying references and encyclopaedias, which inform the reader
about the results of knowledge acquisition, enables the students to collect factual information about sociocultural phenomena, interpret the historical background and process the necessary information.
Whatever functional style is represented, students gain a lot if they are engaged in the multi-levelled process of text interpretation:
Step One. They collect relevant factual information about sociocultural phenomena making necessary notes for themselves.
Step Two. They interpret the concepts representing various social tendencies in the text forming essential knowledge frames in their cognitive system.
Step Three. They draw the necessary conclusions, form corresponding attitudes, and express their commentaries about the studied social issues.
By doing it, they reach the aims of interpreting deeply the "denotation, concept and emotive spaces" of the text [1, p. 123] and show themselves as active participants and subjects of the professional training process.
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During the process of linguistic and cross-cultural reading, students are encouraged to seek actively relevant sociocultural information and interpret it independently of the teachers or in cooperation with them in order to come up later with a professionally communicative project (an article or a survey). Thus, the learners are involved in "a creative cognitive process which is not aimed at just consuming ''ready- made'' knowledge given to the learner by the teacher or the text book, but at active information processing, discovering and creating (constructing) personally meaningful for the learner "knowledge-product" [7, p. 45].
Finally, we would like to give a few task illustrations that can be given to future sociologists in the process of linguistic and cross cultural reading.
1. Read the text about school education in Britain. Pick out significant facts about current problems the British education faces. Single out ideas suggested by specialists which could help to solve the described problems constructively. Dwell on the issue: what should be done, in your opinion, to raise educational standards?
2. Be ready to express your opinion on the social tendencies outlined in the text. Are they typical of schools in Russia? What is the role of teachers nowadays? How can parents be involved in the process of educating schoolchildren? Which features are universal and which are specific for British schools? What can be done to solve the problems mentioned in the text constructively?
3. Be ready to write an article: "Ways to Ensure the High Quality of Education". Include the results of the survey, aimed at finding out the opinion of the respondents on the following: "What can be done to ensure high standards of school education?" Ask the opinion of your relatives, friends, acquaintances, fellow-students. Sum up the results of the survey in an article and draw the necessary conclusions looking at the issue from the sociological perspective. Your article should have an introduction, body and conclusion. Use cohesive devices (firstly, secondly, according to, therefore, to sum up, etc) to organise the flow of ideas in a logical and coherent way.
The professionally oriented character of Task 3 is manifested through modelling the contents and the conditions of social activities during the study process [3]. It gives students choice freedom and an opportunity for self-development. It should be noted that the overall set of tasks is aimed at preparing our students to perform independently professionally oriented projects on the basis of information collected with the help of linguistic
О. В. Перлова
and cross cultural reading, process it and apply the acquired knowledge in the field of their work.
To sum up, it is necessary to state, that in the process of linguistic and cross cultural reading as a professional component of training students develop the vital skills of analysing the values of target communities and comparing them with their own ones, distinguishing the universal elements and culturally specific ones in the communities under study, interpreting sociocultural concepts by using the context as a source of information, finding out the exact contextual meaning of the linguistic means, expressing their own evaluation of socially relevant issues in various cultures and coming up with professionally relevant analytical, informational and media projects as a result of their independent research.
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