INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIONS SKILLS OF A FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHER

Abstract

The article focuses on the intercultural communication skills necessary for foreign language teachers in solving different communicative issues of receptive and productive activities in conditional and real intercultural communication. Considering parties to communication, the author distinguishes perceptive, communicative and interactive intercultural communication skills. Such peculiarities of intercultural communication as the necessity in the equivalence of linguistic structures and filling in the sociocultural gaps, parity of value systems of the partners in intercultural communication, objectivity, impact expedience, conventionality and self-regulation were employed in distinguishing lingua-cultural, axiological, informational, interpretative, socio-cultural and reflexive intercultural communication skills. The character of foreign language teacher’s actions allowed the author to specify groups of skills signifying the ones necessary for perception of socio-culturally marked linguistic phenomena and cognition of new cultural manifestations, provision of deeper understanding of linguistic structures in the foreign partner’s speech, diminishing the level of anxiety in a new situation of intercultural communication, comprehension of a new manifestation of the target culture, generalization and structuring of sociocultural information, affecting the partner in intercultural communication following the norms acceptable in the culture of the studied language, prevention of intercultural misunderstanding, achievement of interaction goals in intercultural communication, adequate behaviour according to the norms of the target culture, finding ways of overcoming difficulties in mutual understanding and correcting socio-cultural mistakes or faults, as well as creating perspectives for one’s own socio-cultural development. The article also deals with the qualities of intercultural communication skills, their relation with the information core consisting of declarative and procedural knowledge and the attitude to the culture of nations of the studied language. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7220/2335-2027.6.8