Linguo-didactic environment for teaching foreign-speaking communication in the process of studying French

Abstract

In recent years, in Russia and abroad, we may have noticed the following tendency: the complex of education-related sciences become increasingly interested in learning about the environment which surrounds a human, its role, its potential and its possible use in education. The initial message is represented by the notion that the outside environment should not be analyzed as a whole but from the position of its influence on the learner. This approach allows creating an environment for handling specific pedagogical tasks by wisely using the outside environment potential and achieving the process of optimal pedagogical interaction with this environment. The linguo-didactic influence of the language environment is a methodical fact, which effects a learner by the following factors: by methodically building an educational system considering the presence of the natural language environment (real and/or virtual) and forming an inner learning motivation, which, by arising from the contact with the language environment, stimulates the learners’ oral activity both during the learning process and outside its framework. Besides, this motivation preconditions the significant intensification of the learning process.

In recent years, in Russia and abroad, we may have noticed the following tendency: the complex of education-related sciences become increasingly interested in learning about the environment which surrounds a human, its role, its potential and its possible use in education. At the same time, we cannot consider this question to be a new one in pedagogics.

The environmental approach, in which the personal development process is dependent upon the conditions of the surrounding socio-cultural environment, implies that we should analyze patterns and mechanisms of the verbal interaction both generally and paying attention to each separate aspect, through the integration of all the sciences which are directly related to this problem (Vishniakov and Dunaeva, 2017: 4).

Throughout the 20th-century Russian and foreign pedagogic sciences became increasingly interested in learning about the environment which surrounds a human, its role, its potential and its possible use in education (Lev Vygotsky, Stanislav Shatsky, Regina Vendrovskaya, Arkady Arkin, Aleksey Kalashnikov, Konstantin Kornilov, L Porcher, P Martinez, RH Walter, Herbert Spencer, Otto Rühle, Ben Zimmer, and others). This approach is based on analyzing the outside environment from the point of view of its influence on students, which, in turn, allows creating an environment for handling specific pedagogical tasks by wisely using the outside environment potential and achieving the process of optimal pedagogical interaction with this environment. Consequently, it becomes possible to determine the basic factors which condition introducing the Information and Communication Technologies to the educational sphere. Above all, we should mention the change of the educational paradigm towards the system of continuous education; the establishment of the competence-building approach to the students’ professional training in higher educational institutions; the informatization of the educational environment; the reconsideration of the teacher’s and the student’s roles in the educational process. In this context, the theory of the environmental dependence and the strategies of using the outside environment potential in the pedagogical process acquire particular significance.

“Educative environment allows to implement different models of the pedagogical process as the three-subject model subject-student – subject-environment – subject-teacher: student (the object or the subject of education) – environment (the object which is created or used as means of pedagogical influence or the subject of pedagogical interaction) – teacher (the subject which forms the environment and organizes the education” (Dunaeva, 2006:72).

It is important to mark that the teacher’s role as a subject of the learning process remains unchanged in all the above-listed models of pedagogical interconnection, which is particularly significant in present days, taking into account the change of views on the modern teacher’s functions in a higher educational institution. The teacher’s professional competences are indicated by his/her ability to create individual learning course for every student and to encourage self-development. The significance of this function is defined by the necessity to ensure the required set of the students’ competences, which are directly related to a modern specialist’s development of a secondary linguistic personality. By mastering a certain level of language skills, the specialist is to discover the ability to communicate and to solve problems, to work in team, to develop creativity, initiative and continuous self-development. Thus, we may conclude that the foreign language teacher, especially working with upper-year students and Master’s Degree students, is at the same time the “co-author” of each student’s personal educational project, an expert in evaluating the level of one’s efficiency and a director who manages the realization of the project on practice. Apparently, here we may speak not only about the students’ self-development but about the teacher’s self-development. This allows returning to the “subject-subject” interaction, which will contribute to accomplishing the purposes of modern professional education.

According to Larisa Dunaeva, it is the environmental knowledge which gives rise to the pragmatist, personal, individualized, systematic, complex, problematic, developmental, differentiated, relational, situational, event-related, communicative and other approaches, which are equally topical for the theory and methods of teaching foreign languages. These approaches make the teacher evaluate the outside environment from the didactic point of view, discover pedagogical possibilities in its objects, select and combine them, taking into account the educational purposes (Dunaeva, 2006). Consequently, we have to deal with the questions of structural methods and the organization of the environmental surrounding, since the environment implies only the things with which a person interacts.

The environment as such does not exist, it arises only with the appearance of subjects and manifests itself only in relation to them, influencing a person through the activities that he or she carries out. With regard to this concept, a systematic approach to the study of the environment has been formed. Within the framework of this approach, the three-subject model of the pedagogical process has received its deep theoretical justification, based on interaction, which is the fundamental category of systems thinking. From this point of view, a person is interpreted not as a product of the environment, but as a product of direct interaction with it, and the environment, becoming an object of system analysis, is viewed as an integral system with its subsystems in accordance with its principles.

From the point of view of the selected categories of students and the environment in which they are taught, we take particular interest in a communicative problem approach based on the formation of the necessary set of competences, skills and knowledge in students as a result of external influence originating from a specially organized problem search environment. At present, its importance increases due to a strengthening pragmatic educational orientation. In future, its increase is likely to continue both in connection with the development of information and communication technologies which offer an unlimited information source and in connection with the need for specialists of a qualitatively new level, capable of searching the information which is required to solve the assigned task. The problem search method of teaching in the theory and methodology of teaching foreign languages is not an innovation in itself. The real innovation is the didactic information environment chosen for its implementation, the integrating environment of information and communication technologies.

Addressing the problem of structuring the linguo-didactic environment, which is aimed at teaching foreign language oral communication to the students of linguistic professions in Russian higher education institutions, it is necessary to point out two general approaches which are being used in environmental studies. These approaches – molecular and factor – help understanding the structural units of the environment (Manuilov, 1997: 68). By generalizing the existing notions on the matter, Yuri Manuilov lists the environmental units in correspondence with different interpretations: “the forms and the irritants of the environment” (Ivan Aryamov, Stepan Molozhavy), “the factors and forces” of the environment (Мaria Krupenina, Stanislav Shatsky, Vasily Shulgin), “the elements, components” (Nikolai Bernstein), “the conditions of the environment” (Aleksey Kalashnikov), “the moments of the environment” (Lev Vygotsky), “the stimuli of the environment” (Aron Zalkind), “the parts of the environment” (I. Kalpio), “the sectors of the environment” (Vasily Shulgin), “the stains of the environment” (Andrey Bely), “the place of the environment”, “the molecule of the environment” (Vyacheslav Glazychev), “the influence of the environment” (Mati Heidmets) – and proposes his own term: “the niches and the elements of the environment”. At the same time, the analysis of the listed nominations demonstrates that the molecular and the factor approaches are interconnected. “Forms,” “elements, components,” “parts,” “sectors,” “stains,” “place,” “molecule,” “niches” reflect the static (molecular) approach to structuring the environment, which, in fact, is narrowed to the notion of “place”; whereas “irritants,” “factors and forces,” “conditions,” “moments,” “stimuli,” “elements,” “influences” reflect the dynamic (factor) approach, which is best described by the “influences.”

Without further analysis of the numerous pedagogical environment conceptions, we will point out that while designing the linguo-didactic environment for teaching foreign language oral communication skills, we should develop both the environmental structure (in other words, its material basis) and the processes which take place in it.

If, according to Yuri Manuilov, the “place” in the molecular conception performs a role which is analogical to the “point” in geometry, its location may be defined via “a system of coordinates,” and the location of “place” in the environment is preset by including it in a broader “place” in a higher rank environment (Manuilov, 1997: 70). Thus, for example, an environmental “place” for a working specialist in social sphere is a school or a higher education institution where he/she works, or a translation agency; in the educational environment a “place” is represented by a faculty where he/she studies; the “places” of lower rank are field-oriented departments; then—the foreign language department; then— a foreign language course which takes into account the peculiarities which characterize the environmental “places” in the “professional sphere—educational sphere—studying sphere” vertical. Thus, the peculiarities of the student’s future professional activity reflect on the profession-oriented foreign language course, with the linguo-didactic sphere as its educational surrounding becoming representational and “methodically authentic” (a term by Elena Nosonovich).

L.A. Dunaeva suggests evaluating the outside environment from the didactic point of view, discovering pedagogical possibilities in its objects, selecting and combining the objects and realities, taking into account the educational purposes (Dunaeva, 2006). By interacting with the linguo-didactic environment, the teacher uses the environmental resources and means to contact the student, who, in turn, enriches the environment with the results his/her practical activity. With this approach, the teacher and the student present the multitude of their personal functions, and the cognitive processes start penetrating into the space of the student’s personal, social and professional self-fulfillment.

Below, we will set an example. The introduction and the ever-growing use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have conditioned the appearance of new informational and technetronic factors (Marshall McLuhan), influencing all spheres of social life, including education. According to McLuhan, electrical and electronic means of communication is “the communications revolution” in human history. The special feature of modern means of communication lies in influencing on the whole nervous system of a human being. Surrounding reality is represented by its vivid specificity, and human is under illusion of participation in current events. Electronic technologies of communication contribute to the convergence of mythological (direct) and rationalistic (indirect) modes of perceiving the world, create preconditions for holistic personality development. “The Electronic Galaxy” brings about “retribalization” of the existing societies and reproduces “primitive unity of collective consciousness” on a new technological basis and thus transforms our planet into single “global village.” As McLuhan predicts, the forthcoming global civilization will be the society of harmonious communication and figurative thinking which are the necessary condition of forming higher culture. McLuhan stated his predictions in the 1960s proceeding from the television capacities which occurred at that time. He did not take development perspectives of computer technologies into account, as it had not become a means of communication yet; there were no personal computers, databases, electronic mails, Internet. However, the scientist foresaw the appearance of “hyper media”—the unity of sound, static or dynamic images implemented in the multimedia systems. According to McLuhan, the communication means which modify the surrounding environment, change the world-perception, thinking, and activity. Consequently, it is impossible to imagine any model of education which does not rest upon ICTs. The students of linguistic professions are taught via a methodically organized environment, and the whole process is based on the creation of linked authentic problematic situations. By solving these problems, the students master certain models of language activity. The education content are thus divided into two levels: the explicit education content, which are related to the formation and development of communicative interaction skills and implicit education content, which are related to the specificity of human behavior in certain communicative situations. If the students’ interaction with their teacher is implemented not only via direct verbal contact but via the communicative means of the global network, and the text-writing is linked to the use of the global network searching devices, then the acquired skills and competences are included in the education content to achieve adequate behavior in the corresponding virtual communicative situations. As a result, the students will create a text work which may be applied outside the class, where a foreign language (here: French) is learned. Listening to French radio programs and reading French printed media is now mostly implemented not via contacting the radio and the paper media, but via the mass-media and radio station websites.

Thus, this aspect of education content should as well embrace the knowledge, skills, and competences which concern a wide range of French-language information resources. In other words, various ways and tools of communication accepted in the natural French-speaking environment naturally become an integral part of the education content within the framework of the environmental approach.

The search for an answer to the question of how to monitor the student’s activity in the environment and how to manage the trajectories of students' interaction with its means and resources led the methodologists to using the nonlinear soft control scheme and obtaining a probabilistic result, where the level of the obtained result is determined not so much by the impact force, but rather by its correspondence with the internal properties of the environment (Gomaiunov, 1994: 99–105) and its capabilities. The richer and more saturated the environment is, the greater is the probability of obtaining a given result, especially if the evaluation of the student's activity contributes to the development of his learning motivation and self-assessment. It is no coincidence that in recent years a “portfolio” has been included in the evaluation system as one of the models of authentic assessment (Larisa Khutorskaya, Natalia Smetannikova and others), which provides information about the student (the difficulties experienced, knowledge gaps, motivational background, etc.), which, in turn, provides an opportunity to quickly adjust the learning process.

Thus, the environment surrounding the education subject (in our specific case, students of linguistic professions) is to represent the necessary didactic environment in order to achieve the goals. For the teacher and the students to use all the available opportunities, both sides are to practice interaction and mutual influence in their relationship.

The effectiveness of learning a foreign language in a language environment does not need any justification. The interest in learning a foreign language is due not only to pragmatics, but also to general education, with the language environment being a catalyst for its assimilation both as a means of communication and as a means of learning a different culture. In this regard, a majority of foreign language learners prefer to study it in a language environment, either within the framework of the exchange education, various internships and independent trips to a country, or in communication with native speakers—teachers, colleagues, friends, acquaintances.

The language environment is a multifaceted multilevel phenomenon of reality. Boris Gasparov points out that language surrounds our being as a continuous environment, outside of which and without participation of which nothing can happen in our life. However, this environment does not exist outside of us as an objectified reality; it is in ourselves, in our consciousness, in our memory, changing its outlines with every movement of thought, every manifestation of our personality. This is our constant, never-ending life “with language” and “inside language” is what is called language existence (Gasparov, 1996: 5). The author emphasizes that throughout the life of the individual, its linguistic existence represents an ongoing process with language. Language in this process is both an object over which the speaker constantly works, acquiring life experience, and an environment in which this experience is immersed and surrounded by which it is accomplished. The man “masters the language,” Gasparov notes, but also language, in a sense, masters the man: “all our thoughts and actions are carried out with the participation of the language” (Gasparov, 1996: 6).

Irina Orekhova, referring to the works by Yuri Prokhorov, defines the language environment as “a set of discursive practices of a given linguo-cultural community, a complex of semiotic spaces” (Orekhova, 2004: 57) and offers a systematic presentation and a consistent embodiment of the concepts of environmental learning of foreign (Russian) language accumulated by the beginning of the 2000s. Considering the natural language environment “as one of the most active components of learning, which is both an incentive and catalyst for learning the language, and the process of staying in a foreign language environment as a chain of situations in which, depending on specific conditions, the verbal or nonverbal components of communicative behavior prevail”, Irina Orekhova develops a certain system of organizing the language environment with the aim of optimizing and intensifying the teaching of the Russian language during the student's stay in the country—the language metropolis.

L.A. Dunaeva gives the following definition of the linguo-didactic environment: it is the direct environment of subjects of the educational process, integrated on the basis of didactic principles, necessary and sufficient to achieve the goals of mastering verbal communication under the conditions of the modern information and communication educational system (Vishniakov and Dunaeva, 2017: 125).

Thus, one of the most important methodological tasks is the design of such an educational (artificial, linguo-didactic, problem communicative) language environment, which, on the one hand, would reflect the features of the natural language environment and, on the other hand, would facilitate the realization of its linguo-didactic functions.

This line of methodical research has attracted the attention of Russian and foreign scholars and practitioners since the 1980s. These research works analyze not only the advantages that the language environment and the cultural context make in the process of assimilating verbal communication but also the factors which prevent it. Thus, in particular, it is not completely justified to hope that all students will be able to use the communicative situations that arise spontaneously in the natural language environment, for they are not directed and supervised by a teacher. It is also noted that the natural language environment in itself does not always serve to enrich oral and written skills of the students who often use the minimum of linguistic means that have already been mastered and do not try to compensate for their lack on their own. The role of the natural language environment in gaining background knowledge autonomously, via immersion in the culture and civilization of the country of the studied language, is criticized as well. In this regard, the important methodological tasks include the creation, in order to teach a foreign language, an artificial language environment in which real communicative situations are created; a conscious analysis of linguistic means and the process of verbal communication; assimilation of rules, norms and means of verbal communication; formation of a system of motives and skills for self-mastery of background knowledge.

Aleksei Leont'ev, writing about the linguo-didactic functional of the natural language environment, which, with a certain methodical interpretation, can be used to improve the process of learning a foreign language, highlighted such functions of the environment as communicative, diagnosing, informative, accelerative functions (Leont'ev, 1983: 60–63). He saw the communicative function of the environment in the emergence of new communicative situations which are absent in the study of a foreign language outside the country and which require indispensable communication precisely and only in the language being studied, which, in turn, forms the students' true motives for speaking foreign languages. The diagnostic function is examined by him through the prism of communicative situations, when the student, being in a language environment, feels the inadequacy of his linguistic knowledge, speech skills or communicative and speech skills, their insufficiency or inconsistency, which forms “motivational readiness” for mastering the language. The informative function is designed to facilitate the assimilation of background knowledge, to immerse students in the world of culture of the country of the studied language, into the system of relations in society, to familiarize them with the way of life of native speakers, which forms the motives and abilities to self-master all this information. Accelerative function, according to AA. Leont'ev, is associated with a student's unintended intense exposure to the language environment through the constant listening to foreign speech and reading in the language being studied in the direction of enriching and differentiating their linguistic competence, accumulating probabilistic experience—the unconscious “attribution” of probabilistic characteristics to previously learned linguistic (especially lexical) units and their connections in the text.

Continuing this line of research, Irina Orekhova lists the following objective attributes of the linguistic environment: “natural authentic video series,” “natural authentic audio series,” “natural situational line” (including speech situations, norms of communicative behavior, sociocultural stereotypes, intercultural language contacts), “deep background knowledge,” “teaching element of language,” and the following subjective attributes of the language environment—“hypermotivation of cognitive activity in the language environment” (internal and external motivation, multiple-intensified and stimulated by the objective reality of the language environment), “the possibility of subjective (personal) use of the linguistic environment” (the entire sum of visual and auditory influences of a real language environment). Extremely useful from the point of view of forming environmental methods in teaching foreign languages are series of experiments and observations performed by the author and described by the author, as well as numerous examples of various tasks aimed at “implanting” foreign phones in the natural language environment. Since the surrounding reality has a significant influence on the creative process of forming the language personality (Prokhorov, 2004: 142), in the natural linguistic environment (Yuri Prokhorov), the creative process takes place in the field of the impact of material realities, the audiovisual series, the speech situational series, the text.

In their works, Irina Ignatova and Svetlana Grigorenko made an attempt to consistently compare the natural and artificial language environment from the following points of view, respectively: (1) the unlimited/limited nature of the language environment; (2) language flow (radio, television, cinema, theaters, music, books, newspapers, etc.)/language barrier in its mastering; (3) varieties of speech genres/restriction of speech genres to a minimum, subject to assimilation; permanence/fragmentation of immersion in language and culture; attitude to language as a way of survival and existence/attitude to language as a learning subject; consistency/inconsistency of motives and speech behavior; natural/specially organized acquisition of new language knowledge and skills; the need for possession of all functional styles/preferential focus on the possession of scientific speech and colloquial elements (Ignatova, Grigorenko, 2009: 231–232).

It should be pointed out that in the abovementioned studies, there are two rigidly separated types of learning: learning in a language environment and learning outside the linguistic environment, which should be considered quite legitimate, since the global multilingual communicative system at that time still had not yet been fully developed and did not have a total impact on all spheres of human life, as it is observed in present days. Today, distance learning technologies play a great role in the support and spread of foreign languages and cultures. In recent philosophical and sociological studies, it has been noted that the perception of “virtuality” and “reality” as worlds of different nature is characteristic only of those generations of people that were formed at a time when the Internet had not yet become an integral part of human and mankind. For modern youth, there is one multifaceted world, with two realities being interchangeable and inextricably linked to each other, and if we neglect the opportunities that huge multimedia system offers us via global networks, we lose a lot. Virtual environment, including the language localizations of the Internet, provides millions of people with the necessary conditions to work, study, entertain oneself, and communicate; this is a kind of mirror of a global society which closely interacts with the linguistic reality. It reflects all spheres of the socium's activity and reveals the richest opportunities for penetration into a language, the mentality of its native speakers, their culture and civilization (Vishniakov and Dunaeva, 2017: 88).

Methodically, these processes are reflected in the fact that the concept of a virtual linguistic environment is included in the system of linguo-didactic terms and concepts. This is a complex of digital resources and communication means on the Internet, built on the basis of electronic textbooks and electronic study guides which have been designed to master various aspects of the language or the formation of certain speech skills and competences, or to control the level of formed speech and language skills. It includes educational portals, digital libraries, electronic dictionaries, authentic Internet resources which can be used in teaching and learning a foreign language.

The virtual environment is a single informational and educative field that allows realizing the full complex of innovative learner-centered education technologies which provide a high degree of student autonomy in choosing the trajectory of learning, self-control of progress along the chosen trajectory of learning and encouraging self-evaluation of educational achievements, all this becoming possible with the help of ICT.

With the spread of the Internet, a new environment for the functioning of the language emerged as a means of communication. At present, thanks to modern technologies, there has been a synthesis of audiovisual and situational series. ICTs make it possible to use text, sound effects, graphics, video, photographs for communication and interaction in virtual space simultaneously. For example, when viewing the websites of French media (newspapers, radio, television), different types of speech activity are involved: the user simultaneously views, reads, listens to the information on the air and in podcasts, communicates online with the program presenters, if desired. Thus, the audiovisual channel of the Internet media creates an “effect of coexistence,” when an individual not only sees fragments of life as if he finds himself at the scene of the event, but also becomes its actual participant. The semantic dominants of the visual, audial and verbal series of the French hypermedia text in the perceptive process are combined, contributing to the formation of speech abilities. Thanks to the ability to listen to French radio stations, watch French television and read the French press on the Internet in real-time mode, students face a variety of styles, rich vocabulary, a wide range of grammatical forms of expression; they see the peculiarities of the life of French society in all its spheres (social, economic, political, cultural, educational); join the French culture, its history, traditions; observes the strategies of communicative behavior and socio-cultural stereotypes in communication in order to master all this with the teacher’s help. We also note that in the above-presented studies, we are talking about the natural language environment of the previous formation, which existed before the final formation of the global Internet space and the widespread introduction of ICTs into everyday practice. Currently, the phenomena of the real and virtual environment are interpenetrated.

In conclusion, it can be outlined that the linguo-didactic influence of the linguistic environment is not a kind of potential speculative property, but a methodological fact, the impact of which on the student is determined by the following factors: the methodical construction of the learning system, taking into account the presence of a natural linguistic environment (real and/or virtual) and the formation of an internal motivation for learning, which, according to the results of research by N.A. Lobanova and I.I. Potapova, stimulates the students’ speech activity, both educational and extracurricular, creates preconditions for a significant intensification of learning and a qualitative leap in the students’ preparation by arising from contact with the linguistic environment (Lobanova and Potapova, 1983: 64).

The language environment is the most important constituent of the educational environment. It requires special knowledge and skills, which are ever-increasing in correspondence with social demands. Under such conditions, in our opinion, it is necessary to create a new generation of educational materials which would take into account the updated views on the notion of the language environment, a constantly updated range of methodological literature in the field of foreign language education, continuously updated in accordance with foreign-language realities, a linguistic and sociocultural component which would include a complex of tasks aimed at developing the students’ communicative competence in a creative manner. These tasks are to stimulate self-development, self-learning and motivation for immersion into the natural language environment.