Intercultural competence and social intellect of a teacher in a sphere of psycholinguistics

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The article:

Intercultural competence and social intellect of a teacher in a sphere of psycholinguistics

Eduard Ivashkevych (Rivne, Ukraine)

У статті викладено теоретичне дослідження проблем міжкультурної компетентності та соціального інтелекту вчителя з позицій психолінгвістики. Описано особливості кроскультурної комунікації та окреслено компоненти міжкультурної компетентності вчителя іноземних мов. Стосовно соціального інтелекту, автор говорить про те, що він вміщує декларативні та оперативні (процедурні) знання, які індивід використовує в реальному житті для інтерпретації подій, складання планів та прогнозування як дій повсякденного життя, так і професійних ситуацій. Авторська концепція соціального інтелекту передбачає, що він вміщує когнітивну, мнемічну та емпатійну підструктури. Зроблено висновки щодо впливу рівня розвитку соціального інтелекту вчителя на становлення його міжкультурної компетентності.

Ключові слова: міжкультурна компетентність, соціальний інтелект, біологічний інтелект, психометричний інтелект, когнітивна, мнемічна та емпатійна підструктури соціального інтелекту.

В статье описано теоретическое исследование проблем межкультурной компетентности и социального интеллекта учителя с позиций психолингвистики. Определены особенности кроскультурной коммуникации и описаны компоненты межкультурной компетентности учителя иностранных языков. Что касается социального интеллекта., то автор говорит о том, что он включает декларативные и оперативные знания, которые индивид применяет в реальной жизни для интерпретации событий, составления планов и прогнозирования как действий повседневной жизни, так и профессиональных ситуаций. Авторская концепция социального интеллекта предполагает, что социальный интеллект включает когнитивную, мнемическую и эмпатийную подструктуры.

Ключевые слова: межкультурная компетентность, социальный интеллект, биологический интеллект, психометрический интеллект, когнитивная, мнемическая, эмпатийная подструктуры социального интеллекта.

In this article the problems of intercultural competence and social intellect of a teacher in a sphere of psycholinguistics were described. The peculiarities of cross-cultural communication were determined. The components of intercultural competence of a teacher of foreign languages were shown. The author of the research says that social intellect includes declarative and operative knowledge which the person uses in a real life with the aim to do the interpretation of events, to make plans and anticipate as real actions of our life so professional situations. The author's conception of social intellect shows us that this intellect includes cognitive, mnemonic and emphatic structures. There were done the conclusions about the influence of a level of social intellect of a teacher on his/her intercultural competence.

Key words: intercultural competence, social intellect, biological intellect, psychometrical intellect, cognitive, mnemonic and emphatic structures of social intellect.

Introduction. The actuality of the problem. The main idea of the development of intercultural competence of future teachers is in using of communicative approach, because students have to become effective users of the language, they must not only acquire knowledge (for example, know grammar, vocabulary or pronunciation forms), but also they have to develop skills to use linguistic forms for real communicative purposes. According to the method of communication materials the teacher of foreign languages tended to focus almost entirely on the introduction and consolidation of grammatical structures and lexical items in situational contexts. However, this rarely led to the development of effective skills to use a foreign language. After the publication of books by H. Widdowson «Teaching Language as Communication» [Widdowson 1976] and by D. Wilkins «Notional Syllabuses» [Wilkins 1976], which paved the way to the communicative approach, authors proposed educational programs and learning materials and began distinguish different communicative functions which were relevant to the process of studying a foreign language - such as for example the question how to get somewhere or how to present themselves. Then these methods have been developed and teaching materials for the classroom were designed to familiarize students with examples of these functions in the context and the practice of their use [Wilkins 1976: 17].

The analyses of latest researchers and issues. Therefore, speaking about the essence of communicative teaching and forming intercultural competence, we see that the learning process is a model of the communication. So, it can be provided the following laws:

personal nature of communicative activity of speakers;

interaction of speech partners;

the situation as a form of communication functioning;

content basis of the communicative process;

the system of speech, the use of which would provide communicative activities in communicative situations;

functional nature of assimilation and use of speech;

heuristic communication and so on [Пассов 1989: 4].

The purpose and the tasks of the article. The purpose of our article is to describe the main communicative teaching methods in the context of the transformation of higher education in cross- cultural communication space, to analyze the terms «intercultural competence» and «social intellect», to tell our opinion about the influence of the level of social intellect on the intercultural competence of a teacher.

The tasks of the article are:

To describe components that make up intercultural competence of a teacher.

To show the peculiarities of cross-cultural communication.

To describe the author's conception of the structure of social intellect of a person.

To make conclusions about the influence of social intellect on the intercultural competence of a teacher.

Methods of the research. This article is theoretical, that's why the main method used in the article is the method of theoretical analyses of scientific literature.

Theoretical study of the problem. In the book «Communicative competence: Theory and Practice of Teaching» by S. Savinyon the author describes four components that make up intercultural competence, for example:

grammatical competence. It's the ability to recognize the lexical, morphological, syntactic, phonological features of the language and manipulate the phrases on the level of words and sentences;

sociolinguistic competence or social rules of language use: understanding the roles of participants in the communication, information which is exchanged, and the functions of their interaction;

competence statements that relate to the ability to perceive and produce not a single sentence, but a phrase unite;

competence of verbal strategies used to compensate the imperfect knowledge of the rules in situations where you can not remember a word or can not understand a phrase, etc. [S. Savinyon 1988: 8]

Cross-cultural communication is interpreted by us as a set of interaction of partners in communication, belonging to different linguistic and ethnic communities. Communication in cross-cultural situations, even if its members have a common locales, always is characterized by conflict between knowledge and ignorance, between not native and native, by the way, and the general, between the willingness to understand and prejudice. Thus, the main vector of modern linguodidactic and methodical scientific research should be aimed at resolving these conflicts, to form the theoretical basis for the optimal ways to develop students' ability to understand and realize foreign language vocabulary and grammatical structures that meet their individual communicative activities by other linguistic and ethnic communities and make up the linguistic picture of the world of another nation. In other words, we are talking about the formation of the human capacity for cross-cultural communication. This process is carried out in a high school education in relation, firstly, the assimilation of foreign students code (speech development experience) and, secondly, the development of their cultural experience, by which it is possible to isolate individual attitude to himself and to the world. So, it helps to form the experience of creative activity of future teacher.

Mastering a new language, a person not only expands their horizons, but also the boundaries of his/her outlook and attitude. In this way a person perceives the world and what he/she sees in it, always displayed in concepts formed on the basis of student's native language and in view of the variety of expressive means peculiar to that language. Furthermore, no situation, no event is perceived and evaluated by the student as phenomena and other cultures through the prism always taken in his native linguo-cultural norms and values through the prism of the individual model, assimilated outlook of the person of future teacher.

And there are some other critical remarks concerning the specifics of communication in intercultural interaction. Between people who enter into communion under these conditions consist intercultural relationship in which cultural consistency is known in moments of transcending boundaries of the system. This means that using your linguo-cultural experience and your national and cultural traditions and habits, an intercultural communication at the same time is trying to take into account not just another locale, but other customs and habits, and other norms of social behavior, moreover, he/she is aware of the fact of their foreignness. This fact suggests that intercultural competence covers mainly ontological aspect of personality, while communicative - her language and speech abilities [Гальскова 2004: 6-7].

From this we can make some conclusions that are crucial for the process of modern foreign language teaching in high school. First of all, it is about the nature and the content of the learning objectives. Requirements of crosscultural communication pose the need to teach students (at different levels of knowledge) ability to:

Use a foreign language in authentic situations of crosscultural communication (process of forming skills and abilities).

Explain and learn (at some level) alien (other, not native) lifestyle / behavior (process of getting knowledge).

Enhance individual picture of the world by adding to the linguistic picture of the world of native speakers (process of the person's development).

As we know, skills and knowledge and the process of person's development are links in the same chain - identity formation. Thus, foreign language learning in the context of cross-cultural paradigm has considerable personal and developmental potential and from this point of view is very promising for high school. But the most important conclusion is that we have to understand the modern goal of teaching foreign languages as an integrative structure, which has access to the student's personality, his/her willingness to foreign language communication skills and personal qualities that allow a student to perform various types of speech, the intellectual activity in terms of social interaction with other linguo and ethnic groups and their culture, other linguistic image of the world. According to this social intellect plays the main role in the developing of social intellect of the person.

Contents of studies unrelated languages and especially its substantive aspect (cultural phenomena about which students read, write, about what they learn from the teacher, a textbook, etc.) is not advertising another life, and the basis for the development of future professional's the ability to see the world from the point of view of the media language being studied. According to this no foreign textbooks, even one that is modern methodological concept, can not meet the needs of the Ukrainian school completely, because the mainstream intercultural paradigm improperly restrict educational process parameters of linguo-culture of only that country which language is being studied. Significant place in the educational process should take native linguo-culture of a student. In other words, this process should be aimed as understanding of linguo and ethnic cultural specific of media language study, provided the individual national communicative style, which should distinguish speech and behavior in cross-cultural communication with foreigners.

Culture is understood as a generalized civilizational space, as a product of thought and human activity. This experience and the rules define and regulate human life, people's attitudes toward new and different, ideas, worldview and social forms. That is, in the sense of teaching foreign languages with a distinct dominant intercultural method is displayed together with the factual aspects and linguo- culture, also evaluative aspect. Moreover, besides the description of socio-cultural portrait of the country and the media to learn language, it must be introduced the discussion of issues facing contemporary multilinguistic and multicultural world. These problems can include the problems of racism, discrimination, include those background of nationality, national extremism, protection of minority rights as well as environmental and demographic problems, conflicts (including national, military) and possible ways of their nonviolent solution.

Methodologists and teachers have not yet determined definitively whether it is a new phase of communication methods, or a fundamentally new methodological direction. But now it is obvious that the specific target and the semantic aspects of learning a foreign language in the context of intercultural paradigm due to the fact that a central element of methodological model supports student as an educational process and as the subject of cross-cultural communication.

So, try to explain the structure of social intellect of a person and propose our opinion about the influence of social intellect on the intercultural competence of a teacher. Social intellect, according to G. Ollport is a special «social gifts» that ensures understanding in relations with people and their successful adaptation to reality. Thus the scientist believes social intellect to be certain personal quality, which, however, does not imply a depth of understanding of subjects of interpersonal interaction [Ollport 1937: 513-516]. It should be noted that G. Ollport was the first one who drew a particular attention to the interaction with people and personal qualities that he pointed out reflect the actualization of certain social skills in order to understand better another person.

In our opinion, the concept of social intellect, developed by Dzh. Gilford [Gilford 1967] requires more scrupulous attention. The scientist developed the first reliable test to measure social intellect, considering the latter as a system of mental abilities that are independent of general intellect factor. The ability to measure social intellect followed from the general model of the structure of intellect of Dzh. Gilford. Social intellect as well as general intellectual abilities, can be described in a spatial continuum of three variables - the content, operations and results. Dzh. Gilford allocated dominant cognitive operation - cognition (C) - and actually focused his research on the knowledge of the behavior (CB).

So, according to its inherent nature social intellect is a dynamic formation. Dynamics of treatment of others becomes presentable when you imagine it in the structure of the process of interexchange of ideas. On the one hand, this interexchange is not only the process of projection of one's own instructions or reception of instructions of other subjects of social interaction. In its highest form of development the process of creative interaction with others results into actualizing and intensive development of social intellect. On the other hand, social interexchange becomes imperfect when an individual inactively, implicitly includes the information about another person into his usual arsenal of thoughts, ideas, judgments, etc. But at the same time social interexchange can undergo perversion in a different case when an individual totally perceive («take») another person and for this he tries to give up his own normative-value directions, moral standards, which have already been approved in his socio-cultural environment. Only partial coming out of the boundaries of his social intellect allows the individual to find certain mutual moments that will ensure equivalent exchange of information between the subjects of social interaction. That coming out always represents the unity of two-way procedures: on the one hand, it's the fixation in other people of something unexpected, unique in comparison with usual postulates, on the other hand, it is from identification of unknown, unusual to known, stereotyped, etc. Hereby the nature of this exchange put emphasis on both sides concerning the mutual enrichment of subjects of social interaction.

Thus, a person while being involved in the process of social exchange of information with other people, distinguishes within this information something typical and unique, demonstrates his subjective attitude towards it, pragmatically evaluates another person in terms of real situation of communication and object of their joint activity, etc. Hereby, stereotype, unique, exclusively individual, motivational and purpose-oriented, etc. means of conducting the exchange are not possessed by a certain person directly, are not realized by all the individuals and cannot be always controlled. In most cases the exchange of information happens naturally and voluntary and only owing to the influence of external circumstances or internal stimuli it can be presented on the level of social intellect in a certain needed by a person form.

We believe that social intellect, uniquely includes declarative and operational (procedural) knowledge that an individual uses in real life for the interpretation of events, plans and acts as a prediction of both daily life and professional situations. These views, personal memories and interpretations of the rules make a cognitive substructure of social intellect. In turn, the mnemonic substructure is filled with the person's obtained experience, and empathy - with the possibilities of the subject to use the mechanisms of anticipation in solving various problems of social life.

So, cognitive substructure of social intellect includes a plurality of stable enough knowledge, assessment, rules of interpretation of events, people's behavior, their relationships, etc. based on interpretations of the existing system on the microstructure and macrostructure levels. The microstructure of the cognitive component of social intellect is determined by the functions of the latter, namely the cognitive assessment, which determines competent processing and evaluation of the information perceived by the subject; prognostic, which is the base for planning and forecasting of the development of interpersonal interactions; communicative that ensures the effectiveness of the communication process itself (this function is associated with adequate perception and understanding of the communication partner); reflexive, which is reflected directly in selfknowledge. In turn, the macrostructure of the cognitive component of social intellect manifests itself in respect of the individual of himself as a value, in the value-semantic attitude towards interpersonal relations, as well as in actualization of the motivational value orientations of the individual, axiological attitude towards professional and other activities.

The source of social intellect at the microstructure level is the continuous actualization of listed above functions. In this case, as the result of their integration it can be considered as a set of subjective scales, enabling the subject to be guided by the features of interpersonal relationships, to recognize and adequately evaluate the behavior of other individuals. The task of social intellect on the macrostructure level, is to provide opportunities to assess themselves and others as individuals. In this case, the value orientation of the individual may differ from the accepted social norms and even conflict with them, but there is always a particular social sector and its representatives, where the person will meet understanding concerning his personal vision of the world, personal values and meanings.

Mnemonic component of social intellect of a person characterizes the presence of the ability to interpret the phenomena of life events, other people's behavior and their own as the subject of these events. Mnemonic substructure is based on the personal experience of the subject, where subjective statistics form a personal interpretive complex. Polymodality in this case means that a person has different interpretive complex in accordance with the different spheres of his life. Formally, they may conflict with each other, but psychologically normally are internally coordinated, providing one of the mnemonic component of social intellect.

Empathic component of social intellect in a greater degree depends on the form of behavior that an individual chooses as the priority one, what he expects from the subjects around him, what value interpretive complex concerning surroundings he has formed, what resources in terms of application of the mechanisms of anticipation while solving different problems of social life he has.

Conclusion

social intellect teacher

When taking into account the interaction of a person with the surrounding social environment and the level of his/her intercultural competence the subject detects the integral characteristic of individual experience - personal self-esteem, conjugated with the concept of subjective value. The personality interpretive complex of an individual is characterized by the possibility of interpretation of others, their behavior and actions. These interpretations allow their participants to continuously broadening and adjust the interpretative reserves of the personality experience, ensure control of compatibility and likeness of different interpretative complexes.

In the process of vital activity an individual, because of the necessity to constantly evaluate others, their peculiarities of behavior and actions, gradually develops different strategies of evaluation with due regards for the criterion of compatibility of his perception of the world and the perception of others. These strategies of evaluations in turn form the corresponding personality interpretive complex, which is dominant on the level of the mnemonic component of social intellect.

The structure of social intellect will be analyzed in more detail in our future publications. Also we plan to provide experimental researchers of social intellect of a person, structural components of social intellect, but we predict, that the high level of social intellect must develop the high level of intercultural competence of a teacher. Such kind of empiric research will be done in our further work on that scientific problem.

Literature

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