"At the beginning there was the speech
act within a cultural scene".
Starting from this statement, I briefly describe my vision of teaching foreign languages in light of my latest teaching experiences. My belief pushes me to argue that without a knowledge of the extra-linguistic context while learning a language, our teaching becomes an experience of grammatical formalism, in which students try to memorize morphological categories without any ability to use them spontaneously within an interactional, dialogical and intersubjective knowledge as is usually the case in interpersonal communication. In short, without understanding the context, I always have the impression of "talking on the vacuum". The study of the conversational, sociolinguistic and ultimately sociopragmatic dimension are my pedagogical horizons in order to give meaning to this linguistic teaching understood as an understanding of another culture. By culture I mean the most used way of communicating in order to act properly and linguistically in a given community of speakers. This work of extralinguistic understanding, with the help of classroom teaching material, is made possible starting from the analysis of the text or the dialogue as a place of interpretation of social relations present among the interlocutors. In dealing with the teaching text, I use the analysis of linguistic acts with their illocutionary and perlocutionary force, without forgetting the role of the locutory plan, as the first "encounter" within the working class. Such linguistic acts use a certain communicative "force" according with the theory of linguistic politeness because the realization of a speech act is correlated with the degree of imposition, the relationship between the interacting and also the relative power between them. Furthermore, these linguistic acts pronounced by speakers are often carried out in tune with the tendency or not given in a culture to enhance the positive face of the one who receives your example or with the intention of preserving the negative face of the interlocutor. The ability to use communication strategies with these two concepts of "face-work" are central elements for any conversational analysis in order understand the relationships within a dialogue. In my view, trying to highlight these elements represents a very fruitful way of approaching the text from the point of view of the target "linguaculture". The purely morphological concern can be answered through the linguistic analysis of the verbal forms used by linguistic acts consisting mainly of a verb understood in its semantic and pragmatic capacity to perform a linguistic action. The teachability of language strategies where speech acts are used in assonance with the negative or positive face of the speaker as well as the degree of imposition, the social distance between the participants and the relative power between the interlocutors are my preferred operational tools in my way to understand the teaching of foreign languages.
In addition, the possibility of completing an extension of the semantic field within the text or dialogue remains an important point during the development of the work unit.
This methodological framework for dealing with the text in the didactic context is related to a socio-pragmatically effective use of the language through the recognition of the cultural scene in which "the discourse" takes place. In the context of the choice of teaching materials, I used to make this step towards the cultural dimension working with proverbs, idiomatic expressions, ways of talking, advertising texts, slogans (in a broad sense), rites and myths present in that society, texts on cinema, sport and television.
These examples of teaching materials have the function of helping the student in terms of "motivation" in approaching the language with the help of significant texts on the cultural but also linguistic level. In this way, we demonstrate that we remain faithful to our challenge of keeping the cultural and linguistic dimensions united.
Starting from this statement, I briefly describe my vision of teaching foreign languages in light of my latest teaching experiences. My belief pushes me to argue that without a knowledge of the extra-linguistic context while learning a language, our teaching becomes an experience of grammatical formalism, in which students try to memorize morphological categories without any ability to use them spontaneously within an interactional, dialogical and intersubjective knowledge as is usually the case in interpersonal communication. In short, without understanding the context, I always have the impression of "talking on the vacuum". The study of the conversational, sociolinguistic and ultimately sociopragmatic dimension are my pedagogical horizons in order to give meaning to this linguistic teaching understood as an understanding of another culture. By culture I mean the most used way of communicating in order to act properly and linguistically in a given community of speakers. This work of extralinguistic understanding, with the help of classroom teaching material, is made possible starting from the analysis of the text or the dialogue as a place of interpretation of social relations present among the interlocutors. In dealing with the teaching text, I use the analysis of linguistic acts with their illocutionary and perlocutionary force, without forgetting the role of the locutory plan, as the first "encounter" within the working class. Such linguistic acts use a certain communicative "force" according with the theory of linguistic politeness because the realization of a speech act is correlated with the degree of imposition, the relationship between the interacting and also the relative power between them. Furthermore, these linguistic acts pronounced by speakers are often carried out in tune with the tendency or not given in a culture to enhance the positive face of the one who receives your example or with the intention of preserving the negative face of the interlocutor. The ability to use communication strategies with these two concepts of "face-work" are central elements for any conversational analysis in order understand the relationships within a dialogue. In my view, trying to highlight these elements represents a very fruitful way of approaching the text from the point of view of the target "linguaculture". The purely morphological concern can be answered through the linguistic analysis of the verbal forms used by linguistic acts consisting mainly of a verb understood in its semantic and pragmatic capacity to perform a linguistic action. The teachability of language strategies where speech acts are used in assonance with the negative or positive face of the speaker as well as the degree of imposition, the social distance between the participants and the relative power between the interlocutors are my preferred operational tools in my way to understand the teaching of foreign languages.
In addition, the possibility of completing an extension of the semantic field within the text or dialogue remains an important point during the development of the work unit.
This methodological framework for dealing with the text in the didactic context is related to a socio-pragmatically effective use of the language through the recognition of the cultural scene in which "the discourse" takes place. In the context of the choice of teaching materials, I used to make this step towards the cultural dimension working with proverbs, idiomatic expressions, ways of talking, advertising texts, slogans (in a broad sense), rites and myths present in that society, texts on cinema, sport and television.
These examples of teaching materials have the function of helping the student in terms of "motivation" in approaching the language with the help of significant texts on the cultural but also linguistic level. In this way, we demonstrate that we remain faithful to our challenge of keeping the cultural and linguistic dimensions united.
The teaching strategies put in place are linked to the
understanding of these cultural materials with structured exercises,
multiple choice, interlocking activities, definition of words and
sentences, reformulation of proverb, cloze, quiz and other language games.
These are some basic elements of my way of understanding the work of "foreign language teacher" with the aim of training young people capable of comparing their cultural horizons and opening up to the world without fear and without pre-established cultural boundaries.
These are some basic elements of my way of understanding the work of "foreign language teacher" with the aim of training young people capable of comparing their cultural horizons and opening up to the world without fear and without pre-established cultural boundaries.
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