The role of contextualization in teaching discourse competence: the experience of the English language university course aimed at acquiring proficiency

кандидат філологічних наук, доцент кафедри англійської мови Національного університету «Києво-Могилянська академія» (Київ, Україна)

Роль контекстуалізації у навчанні дискурс-компетенції: досвід викладання університетського курсу англійської мови, націленого на досягнення професійного рівня

Стаття наголошує на важливості вивчення мови у повній перспективі контекстуалізації; не окремих лексичних або граматичних одиниць, а певних текстів у їх контексті, що значною мірою сприяє набуттю дискурсивної компетенції. Стаття наводить основні комунікативні стратегії, а також оцінює методи і способи викладання мови для розвитку академічних навичок, що вимагаються Загальноєвропейськими рекомендаціями з мовної освіти.

Стаття має на меті довести важливість контексту при навчанні загальної дискурсивної компетенції, що є передумовою набуття професійного рівня володіння мовою на університетському рівні. Автори наводять основні висновки зі свого досвіду викладання курсу англійської мови для філологічних спеціальностей для студентів третього року навчання в НаУКМА. Теми, що пропонуються до вивчення є складними або академічними аспектами таких абстрактних тематик, як Світ англійської мови, Ділова комунікація, Розум і мислення, Новини і медіа, Світові виклики, Час, Технології та інновації. Програма курсу побудована з урахуванням контекстного підходу, який передбачає широке залучення автентичних матеріалів різних жанрів та тематики, а не використання одного базового підручника. Дослідження пропонує цілі навчання для чотирьох комунікативних стратегій у мові: сприйняття, продукування, медіація та взаємодія.

Автори доводять, до дискурсивна компетенція має досягатися шляхом повторення продуктивних методів у типових практичних завданнях на слухання, говоріння й письмо. Серед автентичних матеріалів, що пропонуються викладачами є газетні й журнальні статті, дискусії на каналі TEDTalks, обговорення новин, документальних фільмів, інтервю, частин книги та інші матеріали. Автентичні тексти мають обиратися не лише викладачем, але й студентами. Дослідження пропонує цілі чотирьох комунікативних мовних стратегій: сприйняття, продукування, медіація і взаємодія, які мають бути чітко зазначені у програмі курсу й братися до уваги при розробці окремих завдань. Результати дослідження можуть бути використані викладачами університетів при розробці своїх власних мовних курсів.

Ключові слова: дискурс-компетенція, контекст, комунікативні мовні стратегії.

Main part

Problem statement. In recent years, there has been an extensive discussion about the importance of teaching language within the broad context of real - life communication. Learning a language is viewed as a creative form of cognitive development which engage numerous mental skills and activates mind processes. This is the concept of communicative language teaching with the goal of teaching communicative competence (Hymes, 1972). The rules are acquired implicitly through productive and receptive methods by pattern practice drills, listening, speaking and writing. The study of the relationship between language and its contexts of use based on genre is the study of discourse organization. Put in a different way, discourse is concerned with extended stretches of language produced in a particular context, and this approach takes into account a variety of factors: felicity conditions, goals of the communication, as well as the relationship between the speakers. It is in the classroom that most students get their main exposure to the target language, both general purpose language and language for specific purposes. When producing discourse or communication, what matters is not only the knowledge of words and sentences as segmental text elements (language thesaurus) but also cultural and world knowledge as text representation (subject thesaurus). In order to communicate successfully, it is important to see the relations between the sentences and the paragraphs in writing discourse and relations between the utterances and transactions in speaking.

The concept related to teaching discourse is basically the exchange of set structures. That approximates this approach to structural analysis developed by two British linguists, John Sinclair and Malcolm Coul - thard (1975), it describes `rules' underlying well - formed discourse. Roughly, it enables teachers to model spoken language in the world outside the classroom, suggesting ways of constructing dialogues and role-plays for practicing conversation. Some important principles and patterns underlying discourse have been discovered. The discourse analysts explained the difference between a coherent piece of discourse and a random collection of utterances. Just as students are taught the rules of how to construct grammatically correct sentences, they need to be taught how to construct a coherent discourse.

The principles of cohesion and the interaction of grammar and lexicon were investigated. Halliday and Hasan's (1976) analytical approach to text construction outlined/explained linguistic and lexical means by which intertextual semantic relationships are established. The intuitively identified relationships between propositions in text and text flow were formalized and defined in terms of the linguistic and dis - coursal functions of elements. According to Halliday and Hasan, cohesion occurs `when interpretation of some element in discourse is dependent on another' (p. 4). The authors investigated how discourse organization and logical structure contributes to overall cohesiveness of text and the role that contextuality plays in that text. Halliday and Hasan indicated that linguistic cohesion has three main functional and semantic components: ideational, interpersonal, and textual. Ideational cohesion deals with the content (ideas) expressed in text (including the context of culture); the interpersonal component includes the social, expressive, and contextualized functions of language use, as well as the writer's attitudes, judgements, and tone; and the textual element is concerned with the linguistic means of constructing text and making it cohesive, for example, phrases and clauses used functionally (metatext markers, linking words) within the purpose of discourse.

Language functions or communicative intentions made it possible to use the target language effectively in situations that involved communication. Introducing oneself, asking for directions, ordering a meal, and purchasing a train ticket are typical examples found in textbooks. These functions take place within notions such as time, space, social relations, and so forth. We can say that language is used to accomplish speech acts in given contexts and situations. Through a speech act, a speaker seeks to act upon a listener through his or her words. Examples of speech acts include asking, instructing, affirming, and begging; each of these intentions can be expressed differently - through direct or indirect speech acts. Moreover, the word choice for completing every speech act is immensely diverse. The words and expressions vary depending on the message, the context, and the situation. What is more, the same words and expressions can be used to convey different messages. Learners must learn the language, not just about the language (Piccardo 2014, p. 11). Language is a complex phenomenon and language teaching must take this complexity into account. Language cannot simply be presented as a set of rules to be learned, and language learning cannot be reduced to imitation.

We adopted CEFR as a guideline for language assessment. Consequently, the course had to adopt its objectives in terms of language competence. With orientation on real-life tasks, the CEFR proposes a broad definition of language use and learning, including general competences, communicative language competences, and an understanding of the specifics of the contexts of language use, as well as general cognitive capabilities (Council of Europe, 2020). According to CEFR, `proficiency' corresponds to «ability to perform communicative language activities, whilst drawing upon both general and communicative language competences (linguistic, sociolinguistic, and pragmatic), and activating appropriate communicative strategies. While linguistic competence is concerned with language resources or language usage, pragmatic competence is concerned with the student's knowledge of the principles of language use. Three types of competence are distinguished: discourse competence, functional competence and design competence. Discourse competence concerns the ability to organize texts and includes such aspects as coherence and cohesion.

CEFR takes an innovative stance in seeing learners as language users and social agents, and thus seeing language as a vehicle for communication rather than as a subject to study. We align the syllabus with CEFR's core principles, C1 descriptor of which entails the ability to understand and produce linguistically complex texts. The topics we suggest to the students are complex academic or professional withing such abstract themes as World English, Business Communication, The Mind, News and Media, Global Issues, Time, Technology and Innovation. The engaging topics, which are relevant to the students' interests, motivate the students and contribute to communicative competence. Within each topic we develop four communicative strategies and focus on learning objectives for each of them. This can be seen in Table 1.

Conclusions. Overall, teaching some important principles and patterns that underlie different discourses is vitally important. That is what can help students gain mastery of sophisticated and natural language in order to manage communication in a wide variety of encounters, including international exams. The use of authentic materials of different themes and genres makes the process of teaching more applied and adjusted to real life situations. The method of contextual learning has been successfully approbated and implemented for teaching students of philological specialties in the National University of «Kyiv-Mohyla Academy» and thus can be recommended for a wider practice for students of non-linguistic specialties as well. Through authentic models of effective communication, students build fluency in their production skills needed to achieve academic and personal success.