Development Of E-Course In Foreign Languages: Paroemia As A Linguocultural Component

Paremiological unit as a carrier of cultural information

The choice of language material is important to identify national-cultural features of world pictures. It is necessary to select those language units which contain information about universal and national-cultural peculiarities of different world pictures. Such language units traditionally include (), which fix and transmit human values from generation to generation around the world as well as the uniqueness of the speaker's world-view. The study of universal and national-cultural features of languages and world-views, expressed by paremiological units, is relevant in linguistics and methodology of teaching foreign languages.

According to the etymological reference, the term (Gr.) (paroemia) is formed using the prefix παρά and the root which the Greeks used to designate the nouns "road, way" (Karagiorgos, 2015). Currently, the paremiological unit (or paroemia) is considered as a unit determined by national and cultural specifics and represents one of the ways to depict the surrounding reality. A special place in language and culture studies is occupied by proverbs, since cultural and national traditions are recorded via proverbs in order to be passed on through generations (Kirsanova, 2018). The term "paremiological unit" is very common in various fields that are closely related to language, culture, and communication in general. Paremiological units reflect the peculiarity of the people's world-view which is formed in daily life in the course of practical cognitive activity when a person comes into contact with the outside world (Chernysheva, 2004). Paroemias are considered as secondary language signs, i.e. closed stable phrases that are markers of situations or relations between realities and mechanisms for encoding and decoding different linguocultures (Letova, 2004). The purpose of creating paremiological units is not only to fix the surrounding world, but also to express the interpretation, evaluation and subjective attitude of representatives to the considered objects. Paroemia is a generalization of the people's experience and recommendation to native speakers for doing certain actions based on it.

In accordance with the relationship between language and culture, paremiological units are classified into the following groups (Chernysheva, 2004): 1) Eng.Germ.with the meaning "the result depends on the work quality", etc.; 2) stable language units that: Eng.Germ.have a similar meaning "completing the work and achieving the results", but different structures and lexical components, etc.; 3): germ.

As a result of comparing the paremiological units in different languages, the first group of paroemias contains only universal characteristics; the second group includes proverbs with identical meanings, but different structures and lexical components. The third group conveys exclusively the national-cultural specifics of the world picture.

Considering paroemias as linguocultural units in the comparative aspect it is necessary to classify them into the following groups (Chernysheva, 2004): 1) absolute equivalents that coincide in structures, lexemes, meanings and convey the universal specifics of various linguocultures: EngGerm have the general meaning "doing/ completing work"; 2) paremiological units in the certain languages that are similar in meanings, but different in structures and lexical components: Eng.; Germ.. These units do not have absolute lexical equivalences, but they emphasize the importance of the sustained work; 3) ethno-cultural lacunar paremiological units, which reflect national-cultural specificity of the certain world picture: Thus, paroemias as language units and carriers of linguocultural information are resources for studying the universal and national-cultural specifics of languages and world-views. Paroemias include two types of language units which have universal and different peculiarities in structural composition and functions.

Types of paremiological units: universal and differential features

In the present research, it is important to determine the belonging of a particular paremiological unit to the certain type: aor a Accordingly, it is necessary to study these notions and their definitions in detail as well as to identify their universal and differential features.

Proverbs and sayings were fixed in languages in 4th century B. C. Aristotle (384-322 BC) argued that the proverb was a record of "old wisdom" and the linguistic element remained in languages due to their brevity and accessibility of the material (Karagiorgos, 2015). After some time the saying appeared in languages as a new kind of paroemias. Currently, native speakers often use equally the terms "proverbs" and "sayings". However, linguists use proverbs and sayings as linguistic, folklore and ethnographic terms, clearly differentiating them.

defines or evaluates an important life phenomenon for a given linguistic culture. Sayings are expressions based on metaphor, hyperbole, comparison and paradox. Sayings differ from proverbs and consist of one-member sentences. This kind of the paremiological units is devoid of instructive meaning and represents a part of the sentence. Sayings, i.e. language clichés are devoid of imagery. These paremiological units are frequently used without a certain context, therefore, they are neutral (Korolkova, 2007). This kind of paroemias conveys a direct meaning, for example, is a figurative and logically complete utterance (Vlavatskaya & Zaikina, 2019). Proverbs have compositional structures organized by rhythm, assonances, rhyme and alliteration. These paroemias are didactic and represent a simple or complex sentence with two parts. In contrast to sayings, proverbs contain literal and figurative meanings, e.g.. In axiological aspect proverbs and sayings are equipollent, because they are not only that reflect universal or national-cultural specifics of the certain object or phenomenon in the ambient reality, but also expressabout the world and people's behavior with the help of meanings (Zhukov, 2014).

Thus, proverbs and sayings belong to the paremiological fund in the presence of the following universal properties (Nelyubova et al., 2020): 1) or: proverbs and sayings are used in speech in the form of fixed and syntactically indivisible language units; 2)all paroemias are used in their original forms and easily distinguished from the general text; 3): proverbs and sayings are fixed in the corresponding paremiological dictionaries; 4): paremiological units do not always have a literal meaning, consequently there is a need for semantic analysis of these language units in order to correctly present the utterance; 5): paroemias are nationally significant and widely distributed among speakers of different languages. Proverbs and sayings have these properties, because they represent cultural-historical values and people's attitudes to a particular object of the world. Moreover, it is important to study the semantics of paremiological units and their correct interpretation; 6): all paremiological units have a didactic function, reflect the accumulated cultural and historical experience of the people, represent the features of objects in the ambient reality, contain cultural and linguistic values; 7): it is possible to preserve semantic integrity and to recover an original variant of the transformed utterance. Thus, paroemias (i.e. proverbs and sayings) are stable, nationally and culturally marked units that perform a didactic function and contain information about the axiological component of a certain world picture.

In the present research, to create the system of tasks in the German language it is necessary not only to distinguish between proverbs and sayings, but also to consider their structural and semantic features in order to 1) correct their use in the context for linguistic analysis in German, 2) select an exact equivalent and analogue in Russian or English to the paroemia in the German language, 3) eliminate incorrect interpretation of the semantics in paremiological units; 4) correct use of paroemias in the certain task formats; 5) develop lexical skills and linguocultural competence among students using tasks aimed at studying and learning the paroemias in the German language.

A system of tasks for E-Learning course

The conducted theoretical analysis of linguistic literature confirms the validity of including paremiological units in the system of tasks in the e-learning course in German as a second language. It is worth nothing that proverbs and sayings as stable linguistic units and national-cultural markers contribute to the formation of linguocultural competence closely interconnected with communicative competence among students.

Task development for the e-learning course required an analysis of German textbooks and the experience of teaching a foreign language by means of proverbs and sayings, as well as determination of significance to study proverbs and sayings within the framework of the discussed topics by students specializing in foreign languages. According to the experience of inclusion in the process of teaching German as a foreign language, it is important to study proverbs and sayings systematically through a variety of motivating exercises that contribute to the preservation of learned units in long-term memory (Miletić, 2019).

Kuns proposes threefold study of phraseological units (recognition – disclosure of meaning/ explanation – practical use) (Miletić, 2019). It seems logical and can be used as a basic formula for studying paroemias in the German course. In addition, it is advisable to design a system of tasks in such way that students are provided at least three times presentation of each unit in different contexts when activating various channels of perception; reliance on the first foreign (English) language; the possibility of organizing various forms of work (individual, group, as well as project and creative); use of a digital component. The contextual study of proverbs and sayings is significant, because it allows students to use paremiological units adequately in a specific situation. The proposed system of tasks is implemented in the format of the e-learning course in basic German as the second foreign language (Basic course GERMAN) (Morozova, 2015) in the NSTU DiSpace e-learning system. The study of proverbs and sayings is provided within each module, the number of which is determined by the specifics of the topic. The system of tasks includes lexical, linguistic (speech), conditional and real-communicative tasks (Arutyunov, 1990). Digital support of the e-learning course is represented by a series of lexical, linguistic (speech), conditionally communicative online tasks created in the eLang NSTU online learning system for foreign languages (Bovtenko, 2015). Examples of lexical tasks are aimed at finding matches in English (Figure 1.), restoring the elements’ sequence of a proverb/ saying, filling in the gaps. Language tasks are represented by the selection of the context corresponding to the image, the inclusion of the proverb in the situation that is appropriate in meaning, etc. Examples of conditionally communicative tasks are focused on constructing an utterance within a certain situation (dialogue) using key words and phrases, explaining the meaning of proverbs and guessing a proverb (Figure 2.), real-communicative tasks – constructing an utterance without using supports.

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The topic is "My health. At the doctor's". Basic German course. NSTU eLang e-learning system

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The topic is "My health. At the doctor's". Basic German course. NSTU DiSpace e-learning system

The control and evaluation apparatus includes the performance of training, control-training and final tests, as well as project and creative work. Examples of projects and creative works include the development of the thematic mini-glossary (catalog) of German-English pairs of proverbs and sayings, or games to memorize proverbs and sayings with using visual elements. The implementation of the tasks’ system was carried out in groups of students specializing in "Linguistics". The number of respondents was 30. The quality of paremiological units’ retention was checked using the final test created in the constructor of tests, surveys, crosswords Online Test Pad (Morozova, 2020). According to the experiment, which included a comparison of the obtained results after doing exercises in starting and final tests, showed a higher level of paremiological units’ retention among students of the experimental group in the comparison with the control group.