Necessity to study this discipline

The persons whose future profession is foreign language, will hardly remonstrate against need of deep and extensive knowledge of varied aspect, anyway connected with country of the studying language. In concrete, we are speaking about history, geography, economy, culture and other elements of foreign country.

Who is important and necessary to study these discipline?

At first, we are speaking about people, who by circumstances must visit other country with different purpose: business, cultural and so on. More often similar contacts are often connected with professional activity of the person. In this case knowledge of culture of the other country is very important.

Knowledge of culture of the other country has the special importance for the teacher of the foreign language. He is a conductor for children or students in the world of the someone else culture. It is possible to connect learning of the language and study of the culture. On the help comes discipline “lingvo-countrystudy”, which will unite the disciplines “foreign language” and “countrystudy”.

Lingvo-countrystudy presents itself the area of the knowledge and, accordingly, the subject, which is called to help the students to possess the foreign culture, using herewith foreign language, which itself is a part of culture of the language studying country. This is the general understanding of this discipline.

The persons who have been born and grown in one culture adopt it already in childhood. As to the foreign language, the assimilation of the basic points of it ends to 10-11 years old. The assimilation of national culture is an essential component of the child socialization.

The assimilation of the someone else culture can occur in any age, when person by force of circumstances changes the living place, falls into the other culture and have to be adapted to it. Such process in science can be called accommodation. There are two types of accommodation: full and partial. Full accommodation takes place when the person falls into the other country and is completely adapted to life in other conditions. We speak about partial accommodation when living in another country the person preserves his language and national culture and simultaneously follows the culture of the country he lives in.

The personality, which possesses his own culture and someone else, is identified in sociology as the personality on border of the cultures.

Except natural accommodation the similar processes can occur in artificial conditions, first of all during education. Studying foreign language and bases of the foreign culture, a pupil or student falls into the world of other culture, consequently, occurs accommodation. At condition of the positive motivation and correct organized scholastic process such accommodation can be efficient enough. In reality the process of studying of foreign languages must occur under sign of the forming the personalities on border of the cultures. Such personality must be ready to cross-culture communication, when we speak about mutual understanding of two participants of the communication act, belonging to different national cultures.

1.1 Interpretation of the terms “lingvo-countrystudy” and “countrystudy”

Now we will return back to interpretation of the terms “lingvo-countrystudy” and “countrystudy” and try to clarify what is general and what is different between them. As we have already realized, in countrystudy we deal with different aspect of the life in the country. Studying of this subject can be organized on native language. Certainly, herewith “aroma of country” can be lost, but information itself will not be damaged.

The subject “countrystudy” unites and presents all material about the country. This subject is taught by different forms and methods on native language. For high school we mean lectures and seminars, on which can be used as traditional, so as modern methods of the education.

Lingvo-countrystudy is also connected with life in the countries but teaching is lead on foreign language.

The main reason, why lingvo-countrystudy must use the philological methods different from countrystudy, is concluded in indissoluble relationship of the culture and language. The person who already knows foreign language, while studying the culture begins “to feel” it and perceive as personally interested.

The content of scholastic texts used on lessons on lingvo-countrystudy promotes this. If on the lessons of countrystudy we use texts belonging, as a rule, to reference-encyclopedic genre of the scientific literature and to specially scientific stile of speech, peculiar to any textbook of the histories, geographies etc., the texts used on the lingvo-countrystudy lessons belong to newspaper and art stiles and to colloquial style of speech peculiar to artistic products, newspapers or journals. The different influence of this or that text on reader is obvious.

If the first inform the reader and act upon intellect and rational memory, the second influence upon feeling, develop the imagination, figuratively-artistic memory, form the aesthetic taste, cause the emotional response, bring up the respect to “other” culture and develop “feeling of the language”, which allows to understand the culture of other folk deeper. Accordingly the different lexicon is used. While studying the countrystudy the use of special terms (geographical, economic and so on) is necessary, but in the course of lingvo-countrystudy studies we address to commonly used, the most wide-spread words and expressions.

Both disciplines add each other and in total help to form the quality required for specialist in the field of foreign language and foreign culture.

QUESTIONS FOR CONTROL:

1. What this subject is necessary for linguists?

2. What is studied in the course of “countrystudy”?

3. What is studied in the course of “lingvocountrystudy”?

THEME 2 GREAT BRITAIN IN THE 20^TH CENTURY. GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION, CLIMATE AND NATIONAL SYMBOLS

Plan:

1. Geographical position

2. Water resources of Great Britain

3. Mountains in Britain

4. Mineral resources of the country

5. Climate of Great Britain

6. Flora and fauna of the United Kingdom

7. National symbols of Great Britain