Russian Language Studies (Dec 2017)

GENRE-ORIENTED APPROACH, GENRE AWARENESS AND GENRE COMPETENCE AS CATEGORIES OF LINGUISTIC DIDACTICS

  • I A Sotova

DOI
https://doi.org/10.22363/2312-8631-2017-14-4-427-446
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 15, no. 4
pp. 427 – 446

Abstract

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The article discusses the concepts of a genre-oriented approach to teaching speech activity, genre awareness and genre competence as categories of linguistic didactics. The author defines the genre-oriented approach as the focus of linguistic education on mastering communicative activities in a genre aspect, through a focused exploration of genre forms of everyday, public and/or professional speech based on models of speech genres relevant to a particular student body. The process of mastering genres of speech includes a consistent achievement of the level of genre awareness and genre competence. Genre awareness is understood by the author as the linguistic persona ability to perceive and correctly use texts/utterances of a range of genres, awareness of norms, rules and scripts for speech behaviour in typical situations of communication. It is a set of basic genre knowledge, skills and competencies that allow a person to participate in everyday and academic communication. Genre competence is understood by the author as the ability of a linguistic persona to consciously predict the genre organization of speech, understand and generate texts / statements of different genres depending on the situation of communication, to manage the situation of communication. Genre competence is a quality of an individual that determines the ability and readiness for professional (including scientific) communication. The achievement of genre awareness and genre competence levels is viewed by the author as successive stages of genre thinking development of a linguistic persona. The transition from genre awareness to genre competence is characterized by increasing the level (depth) of comprehension of the genre aspect of speech activity. Methodological support of this process is one of the important tasks of the methods of teaching Russian as a native, non-native and foreign language. The development of genre competences of a student body has its own peculiarities and requires the creation of special genre-oriented teaching methods.

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