Creolized Multimedia Space In Fostering Students’ Intercultural Communication In English Language Teaching

6.1. intercultural communication as a goal of English language teaching in higher education institutions

Fostering intercultural communication in English language teaching in universities is one of the relevant and widely researched issues. The variety of approaches to the description and presentation of this phenomenon significantly complement each other but, nevertheless, complicate an unambiguous understanding of the term itself.

First of all, the concept intercultural communication to a certain extent correlates with the notion dialogue of cultures , that is communication of people belonging to different national cultures (Frik, 2013; Samokhina, 2019); free communication of people in the field of academic and business environments (Yuges, 2020).

Studying the problems of intercultural communication leads to understanding the aspects, peculiarities, and principles of communication and basic functions of culture (Crystal, 2017; Yuges, 2020), the impact of cultural values and traditions on peoples’ self-awareness and their perception of other cultures (Remache, 2016), the possible ways of developing the future specialists’ personality, professional and language knowledge for applying them in divergent life spheres (Savitskaya, 2020).

Numerous definitions of the concept intercultural communication induce some discrepancy in its interpretation. Still, in most of them there is a common constituent – intercultural communication is assigned to interaction of communicants belonging to different cultures, and studies the difference in languages of the participants of the communicative situation.

6.2. The importance of fostering students’ intercultural communication competence

Most scientists attribute successful fulfillment of an interactive act to intercultural communication competence. In scientific works one can find the following definitions of this term (see, for example, (Bennett, 2009; Frik, 2013; Safonova, 2014)):

• peaceful coexistence of peoples of different groups (different social status, gender, sex, etc.) in a community;

• tolerant and respectful attitude towards people of other nationality and culture, the ability to cooperate with them;

• cultural intelligence implying awareness of cultural processes in a foreign country, peoples’ behavioral patterns and acceptance of their divergency and unicity.

All the above indicates the necessity of fostering students’ intercultural communication competence when teaching foreign languages, since a language mirrors the culture and world perception of a nation. And English lessons are a perfect opportunity for students to have some practice in intercultural communication and to enhance their intercultural communication competence. Due to this, intercultural competence acquires an educational value as it has a drastic effect on student’s linguistic personality formation.

Linguistic personality formation comprises communicative, sociocultural, and cognitive development of students. That is why English teachers should find optimal ways to decrease factors compounding the difficulties of intercultural communication and to teach students to use other cultures as a means of their own enrichment (Fay, 2017; Galskova & Gez, 2006).

Neuner and Hunfeld (2007) state that “the fundamental way of intercultural teaching of foreign languages is the method of comparing the elements, structures of different cultures and languages, establishing similarities and differences between them” (p. 117). Thus, English language teaching sets its sights on training such a specialist who will be apt to take part in intercultural communication.

Moreover, intercultural communication competence gives students the opportunity to get acquainted with the culture of the country the language of which he/she studies; to understand the behavioral patterns of the nation; to become aware of usage peculiarities of the language in the natural surroundings, etc. At English classes this can be implemented via information and communication technologies and authentic materials – original texts, audio and video recordings, – which demonstrate normative rules of the language and contain linguistic and regional information.

6.3. Intensifying language teaching and intercultural communicative competence via information and communication technologies

As was already indicated, intercultural communicative competence allows a future specialist to be a confident participant of intercultural communication. Fostering higher education students’ intercultural communicative competence is a complex, dynamic process which is affected by a number of factors: cultural, communicative, sociocultural, psychological, and linguistic. Due to this, new psychological, pedagogical and methodological forms of its effective enhancing should be found.

As a result, the use of information and communication technologies is considered rather effective. They are some kind of key to promoting the quality of language training, to intensifying students’ cognitive activity, motivation and knowledge of the language, to developing intercultural competence. As a result, there appears a wide range of opportunities for educational and scientific self-realization.

Application of ICT in English language teaching helps:

• create a positive motivation to learn English;

• organize training of students on the bases of individual academic patterns;

• create necessary conditions for enhancing students’ tolerance;

• provide multilevel (continuous assessment, progress check, summative assessment) control of the educational process;

• organize students’ self-assessment of knowledge, skills and abilities;

• save time;

• optimize the learning process.

Currently, various information and communication technologies are wildly used in foreign language classes. For the successful use of these technologies, an appropriate IT infrastructure is required, which is a set of systems and services ensuring functioning of information interaction tools. Thanks to ITC, in English language teaching one can use a lot of different applications – text documents, spreadsheets, images, video files and audio tracks, presentations.

Due to this, such a new linguistic phenomenon as creolized text and multimedia presentation as its form is becoming increasingly important in the process of implementing the intercultural approach in teaching.

6.4. enhanced educational technology and creolized text in teaching English as a foreign language

In recent years, modern linguistics and language teaching have taken a great interest in non-verbal forms of communication, in so-called sources of visual, non-verbal information. This phenomenon is found in many studies devoted to not traditional text linguistics but to linguistics of a complicated in semiotics, “non-traditional”, non-verbal, polycode creolized text (Anisimova, 2003; Bateman, 2014; Price, 2017). We follow the definition of the creolized text as complex text formation consisting of verbal and iconic communicative means being as bonding and whole parts of a homogeneous framework. Among the issues connected with creolized text content of small format, scholars study political, advertising, media-discourse, and Internet memes creolized space (Ledeneva, 2017; Oprishch & Ogareva, 2020; Shatalova et al., 2019).

Creolized text combines two inhomogeneous parts: linguistic (verbal) and iconic (non-verbal). Moreover, texts may be partially and totally creolized. Partial text creolization implies integration of verbal and visual components. Removing an image in such texts will not distort the content, as the verbal constituent prevails over the non-verbal one. Also integrating verbal and non-verbal elements, texts with complete creolization fully depend on the visual component, removal of which can lead to incorrect perception or total incomprehension of the content of the text by the recipient. Among the main characteristics of creolized texts the following are worth mentioning: message, comprehensibility, informativeness, pithiness, image correspondence with the text content, and visual correctness.

The process of forming the students’ intercultural communicative competence through a creolized text space includes several core stages:

• preparatory phase – introduction to the topic of discussion, activation of background and socio-cultural knowledge of students, updating the students’ life experience, as well as studying the characteristics of the creolized text;

• content phase – acquaintance with foreign and native cultures (verbal description of the text, interpretation of information based on the verbal description of creolized content, subsequent semantic interpretation);

• stage of comparative analysis of cultural specificity – intercultural reflection (analysis, expansion of the knowledge resource about a foreign language culture and own culture);

• creative stage – project activity (the development of conceptual and visual thinking in the intercultural space, the development of communicative and social creativity).

In teaching English, the most widely used form of creolized text space is multimedia presentations. But notwithstanding the frequency of their application in the training process, students continue making a lot of mistakes while preparing them.

6.5. Role of creolized multimedia space in enhancing students’ intercultural communicative competence

Nowadays, English language teaching in higher education institution cannot be imagined without multimedia presentation. One can apply it in either learning or scientific events as it fully aligns with academic aims. It is beneficial at any level of teaching process: introducing and drilling the language material, revision and systemization of learned material, students’ knowledge assessment, and control of training as a whole.

Being a creolized text space, a multimedia presentation has its main components – linguistic (verbal) and iconic (non-verbal) ones. They have to correlate with each other regarding the content, composition and language means and to clearly reflect the linguistic and extra-linguistic constituent of the targeted text. The more interrelated these components are, the easier it is for a student to decode and comprehend the information and message of the text. Thus, complete creolization of the multimedia presentation content through the coherence of its linguistic and iconic elements stimulates the cognitive process of students.

Let us consider some examples of multimedia presentation slides with different degree of creolization which promote the development of students’ intercultural communicative competence.

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Figure 01 illustrates a partly creolized multimedia text. The iconic component is the photo of House of Commons. The verbal component is the title and figures. The presuppositive background generates the main imagery representation about the discourse context. With the support for the image of the iconic context and according to the sender’s communicative intents, the message is partly directed on involvement of the recipient into the presuppositive information. The communication component is finding the answer by the recipient on the basis of given content.

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In the above picture (Figure 02 )we see the fully creolized media space. The non-verbal component is the photo of the House of Commons. The verbal component is shown in selected hints given in smaller font, located on the right side of the photo. The key words describe the structure of the lower house (the House of Commons): 1) Decorated in green; 2) The Speaker; 3) 650 MPs; 4) 5 years. Different colours of the text simplify the understanding of the message. The slide can be regarded as an example of complete creolized text as the picture promotes the comprehension of the text content to some extent. The sender gives the information based on the image (iconic component) and it is impossible to replace the verbal component without losing the image semantics and vice versa. The photo fully reflects the discourse context.

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Figure 03 is an example of non-creolized multimedia text. The iconic component is the image of the UK flag. The verbal component is the question “How does a bill become the law?”. The constituents make the slide non-verbal as they do not correspond with each other, do not promote the comprehension of the message,, and cannot characterize the discourse subject. The presuppositive background generates the task but imagery representation does not help the recipient understand the discourse context. The understanding of the image of iconic context without verbal support makes sender’s communicative intents hidden. It is impossible to get aware of the discourse subject without the verbal contextual space. The communication unit is to find an answer on the question based on the specified context. It also motivates the recipient to listen to the message up to the end for full understanding.

Thus, we can see that an important indicator of context creolization is the level of audience perception of the message. The integrity or complete creolization of the verbal and non-verbal components of the multimedia presentation context helps stimulate the cognitive process of students. In case of incomplete or partial context creolization, or absence of connection between its iconic and linguistic components, decoding and comprehension of the information becomes difficult or even impossible.

Some commets on the most frequent mistakes students make when preparing a multimedia presentation. They are:

• overloading slides with too much text and its full reading. It can also induce students to focus on the textual constituent but not on the message;

• using only images or pictures on slides;

• including too much information in the presentation;

• a lack or absence of logic presentation of slides;

• difficult, or too easy, way of presenting the material;

• a weak link or no link at all between verbal and non-verbal elements of the presentation;

• the way of presenting the material itself (for example, reading cluttered slides in a boring monotone; speaking incoherently; neglecting the audience, etc.).

As we can see from the conducted analysis, the formation of students’ intercultural communicative competence is complex and dynamic. In this regard, the effective implementation of the educational goals and objectives depends on new vectors in teaching a foreign language. As a fundamental organizational form for this we see interactivity in education and advanced technologies when teaching English in an intercultural context. This can be fulfilled via creolized multimedia content of presentations, which help provide visibility at lessons with a minimum amount of time, increase the motivation of students to learn English, enhance their intercultural communicative competence.