INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION SKILLS DEVELOPMENT IN THE PROCESS OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHER TRAINING

Abstract

The article justifies the system of exercises, focused on intercultural communication skills development in the process of foreign language teacher training. The importance of taking into account a cultural component while giving substance to language and speech material is outlined. The paper states that in polycultural educational system, where mutual influence of different cultures is inevitable, it is essential for a prospective foreign language teacher to perceive cultural differences, ignoring of which leads to misunderstandings and communicative barriers. In the course of exercise selection for foreign language teacher training such criteria were determined as: language and speech skills relevance, communicativeness, commitment to information acquisition or transfer, cultural orientation. The proposed system of exercises (pre-text, text and after-text) is based on the contrast of linguistic and cultural aspects in native and foreign languages; aimed at revealing differences for overcoming verbal and non-verbal communication barriers, implementation of language and extralinguistic behavior according to communicative situation. A core function of pre-text exercises (receptive noncommunicative, receptive conditional and communicative, receptive communicative) involves students preparation for new learning material perception, facilitation of phonetic and lexical-grammatical difficulties during text review. A key feature of text exercises (reproductive noncommunicative, reproductive conditional and communicative) is to partially elicit reading comprehension by means of fulfilling definite cognitive-communication tasks; appraise the level of linguistic and speech skills formedness. The content of after-text exercises (reproductive communicative, productive conditional and communicative, productive communicative) is oriented toward the check of reading skills and abilities to make use of the information acquired in a definite field. The principal aim of the exercises mentioned is to use
text material as a reliance in oral and written speech.