Daily Excerpt: Communicative Focus (Shekhtman & Kupchanka)
Today's excerpt comes from Communicative Focus by Boris Shekhtman and Dina Kupchanka -
CF and Traits of Language Learning Individuals
The LCF individual focuses first of all on how to say what he or she wants to communicate. For this individual, how usually requires more attention and effort than what; in other words, the mechanical plane of communication is more important than the ideational plane. As a result of this the LCF students have one main problem: pausing. Very often the pause reflects the extra time it takes for the LCF to prepare an answer using a low automated pattern. The LCF individual also has to hunt for low automated words to express his or her thoughts. This creates pauses between sentences and between words within sentences. In addition, when the LCF person makes mistakes, whether of grammar or vocabulary (because of low automaticity), he or she often notices his or her mistakes and immediately corrects them, which again gives rise to short pauses, or so-called "fillers", while he apologizes for the mistake, expresses his frustration, turns red, starts to sweat and otherwise manifests anxiety regarding his or her "very poor English" (or Russian, or Italian, etc.). Finally, LCF students mainly use T>L1>L2 scenario: first, they silently formulate the thought in their native language, then, while speaking, they translate their complete sentence from their native language into the foreign language. This two-step process inevitably slows down communication and causes pauses.
At this point the reader might object and point out that pauses are normal in a conversation between two people and that pauses can convey an array of meanings. Though this is, indeed, quite true, it is true only if we are speaking of communication between linguistically equal partners, i.e. if we are speaking of two people speaking one native language. If, however, an LCF individual is speaking a foreign language with a native speaker, the pauses made will, alas, convey only one meaning to that native speaker: namely, that the LCF is experiencing difficulty speaking the language and therefore having trouble communicating.
The PCF (Professional Communicative Focus) individuals already have such level of automaticity that they can say what they want without being dependent on how. They do not think about how to express thoughts; they just express them without monitoring the language mechanics. In comparison with LCF individuals, they have quite a different problem. Their problem is not in the level of automated patterns and vocabulary (though sometimes they still need to work on that), their problem is in the limited amount of automated patterns and vocabulary. They need more patterns and vocabulary to be automated.
It is very important to note here that precisely due to the PCF's efficient control over mechanical plane of language many students at this level of CF develop comfort zones and do not want to be pushed to levels of higher linguistic sophistication. They encounter a new type of fossilization, which is not connected with the incorrect use of grammar and vocabulary but with the avoidance of the work on the automatization of new complex forms and a new range of vocabulary precision. (Ehrman, 2002). In our opinion this type of fossilization is very difficult to treat and it is one of the reasons why the PCF students quite seldom reach FCF.
There is another very crucial comment to the PCF's performance. The PCF individuals not only lack some sophisticated elements of language but also many simple ones. We may say that their control of how is generally not complete and sometimes they demonstrate the absence of quite frequent grammar patterns or vocabulary, which does not allow them to precisely express ideas corresponding to these patterns and vocabulary. The main thing, though, that a PCF individual has enough language to professionally operate in communication.
The final and complete level of language automaticity is found in the FCF. If there are some differences between FCF and HCF they are not connected with the level of automaticity. The FCF individual would not be perceived as a native mainly because of his or her sociolinguistic problems, occasional non-native influences, some weakness in idioms, colloquialisms and pronunciation. At the same time, however, the language ability of FCF individuals does not impede their speech performance and they fully control the mechanical plane of speech, which, if needed, can be sophisticated and compound. FCF and HCF coincide in this way with each other.
The concept of the CF may be developed (and for us this is the most important issue) into an effective teaching instrument. Indeed, what is the ideal goal of teaching a foreign language? This goal is to bring our students to native levels of language proficiency. So, what if we take the NCF with rich ideational and mechanical planes and try to discover its manifestations in communication and then turn these manifestations into the principals of teaching process? This will make our goal attainable. And our assignment (we remind you) is teaching foreign language on the principles of native speakers’ CF.
For more posts about Boris Shekhtman and his books, click HERE.
For more posts about Dina Kupchanka and her books, click HERE.
The paperback version of this book is available at the MSI Press webstore.
Use coupon code FF25 for a 25% discount.
Sign up for the MSI Press LLC monthly newsletter
(recent releases, sales/discounts, awards, reviews, Amazon top 100 list, author advice, and more -- stay up to date)
Follow MSI Press on Twitter, Face Book, and Instagram.
Planning on self-publishing and don't know where to start?
in exchange for reviewing a current or forthcoming MSI Press LLC book?
Contact editor@msipress.com.
Want an author-signed copy of this book?
Purchase the book at 25% discount (use coupon code FF25)
and concurrently send a written request to orders@msipress.com.
You can!
Find their contact information on our Authors' Pages.
Check out our rankings -- and more -- HERE.
Comments
Post a Comment