Диордиященко
О.В.
Creative aspects of foreign language learning
The notion “foreign language acquisition” actually contains three
notions that are interrelated but do not overlap: mother tongue acquisition;
language recognition associated with language learning at school and, lastly,
foreign language learning.
In its turn, the foreign language may be of two types.
If it is a language applied in the environment where the child is brought up,
then “second language” is traditionally meant. It is a language of the national
minority, an official language for non-native speakers. If there are almost no
native speakers in the given language community, it is “foreign language”. This
article attempts to make a research into the process of language acquisition
focused on the third notion: foreign language learning.
Many psychologists distinguish between two most
essential aspects of foreign language learning: cognitive-communicative and
personal.
The communicative aspect of foreign language learning
implies both aiming at a definite interlocutor and the vision of the world
through culture whose major component is the language. It is the cognition of
the world that allows facilitating teaching communicative skills which, in
contrast with mechanical speech skills, are of creative nature. Therefore, it
is important for the teacher to use different patterns of communicative
conditions so that the learners could master choosing new language media.
Foreign language learning is also targeted at
the learners’ consciousness and connected with motivations, settings, ego
problems, personal/group identification, etc. Communication via the language
must become a means of realization of the personality. Moreover, learners
should be given a positive setting for the foreign speech.
In addition to the establishment of the active
personal position and cognitive abilities, teachers should help learners to
develop creativity that is why teachers should have some knowledge of
psycholinguistic and, what are more essential, psycho poetic mechanisms.
In the process defined above as “foreign language
learning” motivation is unstable and often weakens. Thus, the problem of
searching for new media to sustain the required motivation level is yet more
acute. Creative approach to foreign language learning may solve this problem
most efficiently.
By creating their new ideas in a foreign language, the
learners make their own contribution to both language and culture. To some
extent they feel like being part of this culture. Making up their own ideas in
a foreign language they no longer feel either foreigners or outsiders.
Being creative is seeing the same thing as everybody
else but thinking of something different. There are many aspects to creativity,
but one definition would include the ability to take existing objects and
combine them in different ways for new purposes.
From art, music and invention to household chores,
this is part of the nature of being creative. Another way of looking at
creativity is as playing with the way things are interrelated. Creativity is
the ability to generate novel and useful ideas and solutions to everyday
problems and challenges.
Creativity involves the translation of our unique
gifts, talents and vision into an external reality that is new and useful. We
must keep in mind that creativity takes place unavoidably inside our own
personal, social, and cultural boundaries.
In the creative process there are always two different
(but interrelated) dimensions or levels of dynamics with which one can
create:
1. The system, which may be a particular medium or a
particular process.
2. The second dimension is described by the conceptual
"content" which the medium describes. Again, the creative person depicts
changes, manipulates, and expresses somehow the idea of that content.
There is no one definition of creativity that everyone
can agree with.
Creativity researchers, mostly from the field of
psychology, usually claim that being creative means being novel and
appropriate.
References
1. Зимняя И.А. Психологические аспекты обучения говорению
на иностранном языке. М., 1995.
2.
Зимняя И.А. Психология обучения неродному языку. М., 1989.