Сборник материалов международной научной конференции студентов, магистрантов, аспирантов

Я.С. Холупова

Республика Беларусь, Минск, БГПУ имени М. Танка

Научный руководитель – Н.В. Воронина

THE INTERNET PROJECT AS A MEANS OF DEVELOPING INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

English is an international language and is used as a means of communication between people from many countries. Effective communication with people of different cultures is very difficult. Cultures provide people with ways of thinking – ways of seeing, hearing, and interpreting the world. Thus the same words can mean different things to people from different cultures.

The main goal of learning English at the university is to develop communicative competence: the ability to use the language correctly and appropriately in order to accomplish communication goals. Communicative competence is a term coined by Dell Hymes in 1966. As Hymes observes: “…a normal child acquires knowledge of sentences not only as grammatical, but also as appropriate. He or she acquires competence as to when to speak, when not, and as to what to talk about with whom, when, where, in what manner. In short, a child becomes able to accomplish a repertoire of speech acts, to take part in speech events, and to evaluate their accomplishment by others” [2, p. 277]. In other words, a language user needs to use the language not only correctly (based on linguistic competence), but also appropriately (based on communicative competence).

The Internet project is closely connected with communication as we get an amazing possibility to become a part of an international multinational, cross-cultural society which is based on virtual communication of billions of people in the world. While participating in it we learn to communicate and produce meaningful and real communication. Nowadays internet projects have become an important means in learning English as they provide students with an opportunity to use authentic materials, to communicate with real people, answer their questions and express their own ideas – that is to create real communication to achieve the main goal of learning English.

An Internet project, according to Ye. S. Polat, “is the students’ activity, where the students are not just passive Internet information consumers, but the creators of their own understanding of the learning process subject content” [1, p. 35]. A student is in the centre of this educational technology; cooperation (interpersonal and with the help of the Internet) is in the centre of the learning activity; students are taking an active part in learning; the main idea of the technology is the development of self-learning and self-education abilities. Foreign language teachers pay great attention and interest to the international projects, because they help to create the natural language environment and to form the necessity in the language communication.

As an example I would like to describe the project which took place at the faculty of primary education of Belarusian state pedagogical university named after M. Tank. The project “The art of painting” was created for students between the ages of 16 to 20 who are not native English speakers. The students from more than 10 countries from all over the world were involved in this project. The group was divided into small groups of 2-3 students. Each group was matched with a number of foreign teams working on the same basis.

The 1^st step. Each student introduced him/herself. The students could insert photos of their group. Introducing oneself is a significant moment and opportunity to establish new contacts, that’s why the students wrote their messages with much care, giving details. Then each group sent the moderator of the project the name of a famous painting from their country, the name of the painter and its photo.

The 2^nd step. The students were invited to observe the paintings from their partners’ countries and to find the country of origin of each painting from the list (France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden, etc.), the name of the painting and the painter, and the name of the museum where this painting is exhibited. Then the students wrote a small essay about the painting they liked the best and why.

The 3^rd step. The students were given a short questionnaire concerning the art of painting. They translated this questionnaire from English to their own language with a view to conducting a survey in their country. Each group questioned 6–10 people in this survey, and then placed the results on the homepage of the project. They wrote a collaborative report concerning the results. After reading different international reports, students exchanged their ideas and impressions about the project.

We believe this experience was useful for the students as they had possibility to discover different cultures and to develop their communicative skills. It can be concluded that Internet is a powerful tool to be used in the language class. It is full of visual materials which serve as an aid to understanding and successful learning. As learners are involved in real communicative situations and have to make many decisions and choices for themselves, they take more responsibility for their own learning which leads to increase in learner autonomy. Further, the interactive and multimedia capabilities of the Internet make it a motivating learning tool for the students.

1. 
   Полат, Е. С. Типология телекоммуникационных проектов / Е. С. Полат // Наука и школа. – 1997. – № 4. – С. 34-38.
   
2. 
   Hymes, D. H. On Communicative Competence / D. H. Hymes // Sociolinguistics / ed. by J. B. Pride and J. Holmes. – Harmondsworth : Penguin, 1972. – P. 269 – 293.
   

В статье раскрывается возможности интернет-проектов для изучения иностранных языков. Подробно описывается проект, который был проведён среди студентов на факультете начального образования. Автор показывает способы развития коммуникативных навыков обучающихся разных стран и культур.