G.S. Tobulbaeva
M. Kozybayev North Kazakhstan State University, Petropavlovsk, Kazakhstan e-mail:galiya.tobulbaeva@mail.ru
COMMUNICATIVE BARRIERS AND DIFFICULTIES OF THE STUDENTS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING PROCESS
The different approaches presented by the scientists on the subject are examined and the matter of barriers classification in the learning process is scrutinized. The obtained research results may be used for making up some methodological recommendations and can help to choose the most effective methods of overcoming the language barriers in the course of studying the foreign language by schoolchildren. The position of foreign language communication in the modern world, when a foreign language is a means of communication, cognition, information predetermined the need to own all types of speech activity: speaking and listening by heart in a given foreign language, as well as reading and writing.
Communication barriers are obstacles to effective communication caused by natural, social and psychological factors arising in the communication process. In the case of a barrier, the information is distorted or loses its original meaning, and in some cases does not reach the recipient at all. Communication barriers increase the psychological distance between partners, reduce the level of mutual understanding, mutual trust and, ultimately, the effectiveness of the communication process.
Thus, the relevance of this work is due to the need to master foreign speech in the learning process and, as a result, finding ways to overcome communication barriers.
Key words: barrier, communication, cognitive, language, conversation, context, perception, technique, teaching, communicant, linguistic barrier, methods.
There are sufficient changes introduced into the sphere of science and education at the present stage of our state’s development. This process is associated with the globalization and integration of Kazakhstan into the international community and declared to be significant for the economic and scientific development of the state.
People have studied foreign languages for thousands of years. The analysis of the existing researches shows that there is no clear definition of the barriers which students face when learning a foreign language and there are no structured strategies to overcome them. The conditions and factors for overcoming or comprehension (comprehending) the barriers have also not been completely investigated.
Learning a foreign language has never been a simple matter and like many other educational processes, learning a foreign language has a number of barriers. According to the definition of D.N.
Ushakov, the word “barrier” stands for an impediment to any activity [1, 29]. Thus it should be inferred that the barriers have a negative impact on the educational process too impeding normal personal development and causing the stagnation of the learning process. Some of the main barriers are cognitive and communicative faced by students at different stages of learning a foreign language. According to B.F. Porshnev communication barriers is psychological barriers of different origin, which the recipient sets in the way of unwanted, tedious or dangerous information [2, 83].
In the study of foreign language communication, a barrier is a set of external and internal causes and phenomena of various kinds which arise in the process of communication in a foreign language. In their turn, communication barriers are divided into external and internal.
External communication barriers are formed as a result of the influence of such factors as features of social development, physical condition, language environment. The language barrier is a psychological set of the individual, based on low self-assessment of their knowledge of a foreign language, making it difficult to participate in communicative acts in this language [3]. Internal communication barriers emerge under the influence of the educational process, aesthetic and moral attitudes and personal principles. Internal communication barriers are entirely dependent on personality traits and are often much harder to overcome than external.
There are several barriers that affect the flow of speech in the communication process. These barriers interrupt the flow of communication from the sender to the recipient, thus making communication ineffective.
In general, perception is the way people understand the world. Each participant of the communication perceives the same information differently. The perception of a word forms associative links in human brain which may not match with the associative links of another person.
Among the problems hampering the process of communication, with the construction of dialogues in a foreign language, cognitive, psychological and perceptual barriers were highlighted. The majority of teachers believe that pupils have problems with the oral speech comprehension and the speed of processing the information perceived via oral texts in a foreign language. Students are challenged to listen, to understand words through the context in order to understand what was said, and only then in reverse order from the Russian language to translate the response. It takes a little time and has the opportunity to lose the essence of the conversation. Another important factor is the fear of students to make a mistake in the conversation conducted in a foreign language. Thus students are prone to avoid the possibility of starting a conversation, i.e. a communicative barrier is created.
It is also worth noting that there is a wide variety of online resources allowing to create a more colorful and informative language training course. However, in order to overcome some linguistic barriers completely a teacher ought to identify the root of the problem and try to remove barriers at an early stage. It is necessary to classify communicative and linguistic barriers occurring in the process of learning a foreign language at the senior stage of learning.
The language barrier is the difficulty of expressing your own thoughts or the difficulty of understanding a foreign language associated with fear or shame. Often, having studied English, it would seem, in all its manifestations and complexities, having passed all sorts of tests and knowing exactly level, you suddenly face some kind of obstacle that can greatly hinder you. It seems that everything in the book is clear: you freely read and translate texts, after a little thought, you make up your own sentences, own a basic vocabulary. But it is worthwhile for you in life to break out somewhere beyond the limits of your usual life and find yourself, for example, at customs, at an airport, an overseas hotel, as if paralyzing you, and you cannot even remember elementary words. This means one thing — you are faced with a language barrier.
Speaking about the causes of the language barrier, it should be noted that one of the main reasons is a person’s psychological insecurity, fear of making a mistake, a feeling of discomfort when communicating in English. The fear of making a mistake may be due to improper learning or improperly created conditions for learning English. Often it is the fault of those teachers with whom the student once worked: perhaps the teachers constantly corrected the student’s mistakes, not allowing him to express his point of view, which is wrong. Accordingly, some errors can be corrected in the course of speech, some errors can be corrected only after the person has finished speaking.
Another possible cause of the barrier is motivation , or rather, its absence. The lack of need to speak and express your thoughts is a very important obstacle in overcoming the language barrier.
Another reason for the occurrence of the language barrier is a- lack of practice in speaking, lack of active vocabulary. With a narrow lexical reserve, it will be more difficult for you to explain, as well as understand the words of an English-speaking friend.
Another equally important barrier is the phonetic. It occurs when the participants in the communicative process speak different languages and dialects, have significant defects in speech and diction, with an error in expressing sentences from a grammatical point of view. This barrier can also be generated by inexpressive speech, the abuse of a large number of sounds, parasites, language — patter or a very loud conversation.
The best results come from those people who really want to learn to speak. They «catch every word.» The real desire to speak in English is one of the main components of successful learning and overcoming the language barrier.
To give confidence in communicating with a person in English can smile. When you speak English and again feel shy, smile and make eye contact with the other person. What for? Because it helps to forget about the careful design of sentences and allows you to focus on the content of the conversation.
The barrier associated with insufficient vocabulary can be resolved as follows. You can learn songs. Moreover, there are many suitable songs in English. Texts and translations are easy to find both in stores and on the Internet. At the same time, auditory memory develops and hearing perception improves.
Summarizing all the above, the following recommendations can be made:
1. If you read books in a foreign language , read books aloud, learn words and phrases — repeat them out loud and in full voice, not in a half-whisper. Watch and listen to broadcasts in a foreign language, even if you don’t understand anything yet. All this has a positive effect on the speech centers of the brain.
2. Daily use what you already know, even if it is just a few words. Such an exercise will help you get used to the pronunciation of these words and speaking in a foreign language.
3. Practice with those for whom the foreign language that you are learning is also not native. This will help relieve excessive stress and fear that because of mistakes they will think badly about you.
4. Remember that for native speakers it is also important to be understood, they also often worry and think about how to formulate the idea in such a way and pronounce it more clearly. It turns out that our interlocutors, foreigners, think about us and our foreign is often better than we ourselves think about it.
5. Test your knowledge in the process of learning a foreign language. If you see progress, you may feel more comfortable and confident.
Thus, the most effective for removing the language barrier is a communicative approach in learning English.
The most effective for removing the language barrier is a communicative approach to learning English, which allows you to take into account the personal characteristics of students, allows you to give maximum practice of all language skills and speech skills, which allows you to set situations close to reality, allows you to influence the emotional world of students, cause and encourage them to communicate.
The ability to learn language depends on personal abilities to learn one or more languages. People learn languages in various ways. According to D. Carroll, this ability is the sum of four independent factors: phonological abilities to distinguish sounds and to encode, empathy, inductive ability to learn a language, and memorization [3].
Foreign methodologists emphasize the importance of linguistic, psychological and didactic factors in teaching English. However, the concept of “learning principle” is not a basic category of foreign methods and is now rarely found in publications, probably due to the fact that the term itself presupposes the dominant role of the teacher in the learning process, and is often rejected by modern teaching methods.
However, some authors recognize the need to take into account the principles of learning and highlight the following [4, 38]:
— cognitive principles: the principle of automation of speech units; the principle of using internal motivation (intrinsicmotivation principle);
— the principle of using the student’s personal contribution — time, attention, individual abilities, etc.
— emotional and psychological principles (affective principles): the principle of “language self”, which means that when a person speaks a foreign language, a “second self” is formed in a person, affecting his feelings, emotions, behavior, etc.; principle of interconnected mastering of the language and culture of the country of the studied language. You should also read such qualities as self-reliance, the ability to experiment and take risks when using new material in the process of speaking in English.
— linguistic principles: consideration of the influence of the native language on the mastery of a foreign language; taking into account the features of mastering the target language as an intermediate language system (interlanguage — a constantly changing language system that is between native and studied languages and is inherently individual for each student; improves as language is mastered, approaching the system of the language being studied); the principle of communicative orientation or the need to form communicative competence in the process of learning English.
There are a number of reasons that impede the development of speaking skills in a foreign language.
The following reasons can be attributed to objective ones:
insufficient number of school materials (ex: lack of audio course );
the teacher’s lack of language practice; Subjective reasons include:
lack of motivation in speaking;
lack of vocabulary;
Low motivation of students to learn is one of the main problems at the senior stage of learning. Pupils at the senior stage of education experience enormous stress due to a significant increase in academic load, changes in the daily routine, acquaintance with a large number of teachers with different requirements and features of teaching. It is during this period that it is important to maintain the same interest in the language and make a smooth, painless transition from the specifics of teaching students to conscious learning at this stage.
Thus, in the “Teaching and Learning Classroom» Tricia Hedge emphasizes that “tasks that are aimed at the formation and improvement of speaking skills require great effort on both sides, both from the student and from the teacher in terms of the inclusion of effective factors. As an attempt to reproduce anything in English in front of an audience or a class can lead to a high level of excitement. ” [5, 24]
Concerning, Penny Ur in her textbook “Coursebook in Language Teaching” [6, 121] identifies four main types of difficulties that impede the successful mastery of oral speech in English:
Psychological discomfort. Unlike and from reading, listening and writing, speaking requires greater emancipation in front of the audience in the present period of time. Students often experience psychological discomfort while trying to speak English, in class, primarily because of the fear of mistakes, the critical attitude of others, the loss of their status, or simply shyness in front of the attention that their speech can attract.
«Nothing to say». If students do not experience psychological discomfort, students often face such a problem as “nothing to say” — lack of thoughts on any problem. Therefore, students do not have a strong stimulating motive that encourages them to verbal expression, with the exception of guilt, which obliges them to say something.
Use of the native language. In groups where all students or their part speak the same language, there is a tendency to use it, since it is easier and there is a feeling of unnaturalness of speaking with each other in a foreign language, and they also stand out less than others if they speak their own native language. »
The reason for the motivation of the communicative function is due to the situational nature. Also, the motive of activity realizes itself through the installation as a directing, regulating, selective start of activity. Very often, as the local Methodists emphasize, the reason is the violation of harmony in the system of relations. But, as well as foreign, domestic Methodists highlight the presence of a mismatch in the level of informativeness “I know — I don’t know.”
Consequently, in the opinion of domestic methodologists, the main difficulties in learning to speak should include motivational problems:
students are embarrassed to speak a foreign language, afraid to make mistakes, be criticized;
students do not understand the speech problem;
students do not have enough language and speech tools to solve the problem;
students are not involved in the collective discussion of the subject of the lesson for one reason or another;
students do not maintain the required communication duration in English.
A number of authors (A. A. Verbitsky, A. K. Markova, N. Podymov, X. Shakurov and others) point at different specific ways of overcoming barriers which can be divided into two groups: destructive and constructive strategies [7, 39]. A destructive strategy is found in the psychological protection of students, the rejection of productive resolution of critical situations, removing emotional stress and the psychological barriers of interpersonal communication.
S.D. Krashen suggests 3 teaching techniques for barrier overcoming. They are: natural approach, total physical response and suggestopedia. The first technique is when the teacher speaks only the target language in the classroom. Students may use either the first or second language. If they choose to respond in the second language, their errors are not corrected unless communication is seriously impaired. In this approach, the goal is to enable students to talk about ideas, perform tasks and solve problems in a way that is not pressured onto them [8, 55]. In other words, it is a way of easing the lesson material onto the students instead of bombarding them with loads of input.
The most important professional competence of an English teacher is the formation of a strategy and creating positive classroom community of success for overcoming various language barriers that arise in the process of learning a foreign language.
References: 1. Ушаков Д.Н., Толковый словарь современного русского языка. – М.: Аделант, 2013. – 800 с.
2. Поршнев Б.Ф., Социальная психология и история. Изд. 2-е. – М., 1979. – 235 с.
3. Der Einfluss außesrsprachlicher Faktoren auf das Erlernen des Deutschen als fremschprache
[Электрон.ресурс]. – URL:https://edudoc.ch/record/4081/files/zu07051.pdf (Дата обращения:
6.12.2017).
4. Kolesnikova I.L., Dolgina О.A., A Handbook of English-Russian Terminology for Language Teaching. – Cambridge university press, Russian Baltic Information Center BLITZ: St.
Petersburg. – 2001
5. Tricia Hedge, Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom [Электрон.ресурс]. – URL: http://www.oup.hu/THedge_TeachingandLearning.pdf : дата обращения: 15.04.2018)
6. Penny Ur, A course in Languag teaching. – Cambridg university press: 1991
[Электрон.ресурс]URL:http://www.banarvan.com/DynamicContent/UsersDirectory/admin/MyFile s/Teaching%20Syllabus/penny%20ur%20old%20version.pdf (Дата обращения: 04.11.2018).
7. Осипова А. А., Прокопенко М. К вопросу о стратегиях преодоления психологических барьеров // Российский психологический журнал. – 2014. – Т.11. – №4. – С. 38-54.
8. Krashen S.D Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition – http://www.sdkrashen.com/content/books/principles_and_practice.pdf (Дата обращения:
28.03.2018).
Бұл мақалада оқушылардың әртүрлі кезеңдерінде шет тілін үйрену барысында туындайтын түрлі кедергілер талқыланады. Осы мәселе бойынша шетелдік және отандық ғалымдардың әртүрлі тәсілдері қарастырылып, білім беру процесінде кедергілерді жіктеу қарастырылған. Алынған зерттеу материалдары оқулықтарды құрастыру және шет тілін меңгеру барысында оқушылар арасында тілдік кедергілерді ең тиімді әдістерді таңдау үшін пайдаланылуы мүмкін.
Шет тілін сөйлеу, таным, ақпарат беру құралы сөйлеу ісінің барлық түрлеріне ие болу керектігін алдын-ала белгілеп қойған қазіргі заманғы шет тілінің жағдайы: сөйлеу және тыңдау, оқу және жазу.
Тілдік кедергілер мәселе болуы мүмкін, бірақ әртүрлі мәдениеттер мен ортадан шыққан адамдармен жұмыс істеу — инновацияны, шығармашылықты және табысты ынталандыратын нәрсе. Түрлі жұмыс орны ұсынатын барлық нәрселерді қамту жолында тілдік кедергілерді болдырмаңыз. Тілдік кедергілер жалпыға ортақ қарым-қатынасқа және жеке тұлғаларға, атап айтқанда, егер олар сөйлеспесе және қалағандарына сай келмесе немесе оқығысы келетін мерзімді басылымдар мен кітаптарды оқуға кедергі жасаса. Екі тілдесу адамдарға әлемдік мәдениетке және әмбебап диалогқа толық және тікелей қатысуға мүмкіндік береді; монолингвизм адамға тар және одан да қорқынышты дүниетанымнан шығып кетеді.
Кейбір тілдік кедергілерді практика немесе аударма, аудармашы, тілдік сыныптар, көрнекі әдістер және т.б. сияқты басқа жолмен жеңуге болады, ал кейбір кедергілер әр адамның өмірінде проблема болып табылады. Бұл кедергілер коммуникацияны тиімді ету үшін қатыспауы керек. Осылайша, бұл жұмыстың өзектілігі білім беру процесінде шетелдік сөйлеуді меңгерудің қажеттілігімен және байланыс кедергілерін еңсеру жолдарын табуға байланысты.
В этой статье рассматриваются различные барьеры, возникающие в процессе изучения иностранного языка у школьников на разных этапах обучения. Рассмотрены различные подходы зарубежных и отечественных ученых по данному вопросу, проведено исследование классификации барьеров в учебном процессе. Полученные материалы исследования могут быть использованы для составления методических рекомендаций и подбора наиболее эффективных методов преодоления языковых барьеров у школьников в процессе изучения иностранного языка.
Положение иностранного языка в современном мире, когда иностранный язык является средством коммуникации, познания, информации, предопределило необходимость владеть всеми видами речевой деятельности: говорить и слушать,читать и писать.
Языковые барьеры могут быть проблемой, но работа с людьми разных культур и происхождения — это то, что стимулирует инновации, творчество и успех. Не позволяйте языковым барьерам стоять на пути охвата всего, что может предложить разнообразное рабочее место. Языковые барьеры препятствуют международному общению в целом и отдельным лицам, в частности, если они не могут говорить и соответствовать тем, кого пожелают, или читать периодические издания и книги, которые они хотят читать. Двуязычие позволяет людям полностью и непосредственно участвовать в мировой культуре и всеобщем диалоге; монолингвизм оставляет человека с более узким и страшным мировоззрением.
Некоторые языковые барьеры могут быть преодолены практикой или другими способами, такими как перевод, переводчик, языковые классы, визуальные методы и т.д, Тогда как некоторые барьеры действуют как проблемы в жизни каждого человека. Эти барьеры не должны присутствовать, чтобы сделать общение эффективным. Таким образом, актуальность этой работы связана с необходимостью осваивать иностранную речь в процессе обучения и, как результат, находить способы преодоления коммуникационных барьеров.