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I. BACKGROUND
The broad social background of creating the EUROPEAN ELECTRONIC ENCYCLOPAEDIA “SELF-TEACHING OTHER LANGUAGES” (SETEOLA) is determined by the following factors:
- European integration;
- the urgent need for numerous persons speaking a great number of languages;
- the inability of other forms of language acquisition to satisfy this need;
- the presence of a rich experience in self-teaching languages;
- the increasing role of innovative educational technologies (pedagogical and informational, involving electronic ones) in life-long education.
1. European integration is the process of political, legal, economic, social, and cultural convergence of states situated wholly or partially in Europe. Presently, European integration has primarily come about through the European Union (EU) and the Council of Europe.
2. The urgent need for numerous persons speaking a great number of languages is brought about by the fact that a mong the many languages and dialects used in the EU, it has 23 official and working languages. There are also about 150 regional and minority languages spoken by up to 50 million people. Finally, a broad variety of languages from other parts of the world are spoken by immigrant communities in the member states. The linguistic unification of Europe is no longer a necessary requisite to overcome language barriers; the identity of Europe can only be represented adequately by respecting its diversity. And only the promotion of all its national languages will allow to preserve the richness of the culture of which these languages are the privileged means of expression. The multilingual policy adopted by Europe is thus a critical test for the European Union. Besides, a great number of multilingual persons is currently thought to be one of the main prerequisites for European integration to be successful. That is why the Council of Europe has produced instruments which enable the improvement of teaching, learning, and assessment of modern foreign languages.
3. The inability of other forms of language acquisition to satisfy this need could be explained by the following: (a) learning languages within those forms lasts, as a rule, for a long period of time; (b) it is aimed at achieving average, insufficiently clearly defined and individualized objectives; (c) it cannot foresee the knowledge of what language and at what level may turn out to be necessary for a certain person in the nearest future;(c) it is impossible to forecast and provide a necessary and sufficient number of teachers of the corresponding language at the given time and in the given place; (d) it sometimes so happens that in the area of residence of those wishing to master this or that language a teacher of the required language cannot be found at all; (d) some people cannot attend language courses without leaving their work or studies, because of their family and social duties, state of health etc.; (e) some cannot afford spending money on being taught another language, including by course or private teachers; (f) many prefer to learn languages on their own rather than in groups to avoid problems of psychological compatibility, reconciliation of group members’ needs, interests, abilities, learning styles and so on; (g) some, paying tribute to private teachers’ merits, still associate being guided by them with “limitation of freedom” and “imposing” contents, forms, means and methods of learning activity. All these bring about putting forward self-teaching as a form of language learning.
4. There exists a rich experience in self-teaching foreign languages (Kató Lomb of Hungary, Heinrich Schliemann of Germany, Lesya Ukrainka of Ukraine, Korney Chukovskiy of Russia, Giuseppe Mezzofanti of Italy and many others) which may be regarded as the common historical, cultural and educational heritage of European peoples as well as the reserve of optimizing the modern process of learning languages. The idea of common heritage forms an integral part of the European identity and of the Europeans’ shared values and principles. The today’s European identity is based on a history of border-crossing exchange and dialogue, of interaction and transfer of men and values, of ideas, movements and works,, tangible and intangible, contemporary and traditional heritage with the aim of identifying and passing on that heritage to future generations, while strengthening cooperation between European states.
5. The increasing role of innovative educational technologies (pedagogical and informational, involving electronic ones) in life-long education is observed due to the fact that l earning can no longer be divided into a place and time to acquire knowledge (school) and a place and time to apply the knowledge acquired (the workplace). Instead, learning can be seen as something that takes place on an on-going basis from our daily interactions with others and with the world around us. Life-long education is becoming an important indicator of country's technological development and social progress. And in many, if not most, cases self-teaching is a crucial element of life-long education. At present, information technologies are developing very quickly and play a significant role in promoting modernization of education. In the era of knowledge economy, people pay more and more attention to life-long education with the fast updating speed of knowledge and continuing emerging of new technologies. Along with the rapid development of modern educational technologies, life-long education is being constantly innovated and produces a tremendous optimizing effect on educational concepts, process, forms, methods and management.
II. PURPOSES OF CREATING SETEOLA
1. The Educational and theoretical purpose – to transfer to the users the knowledge of self-teaching as a form of language learning. There are not so many accounts of language self-teaching by outstanding self-learners, nor are there are many case studies of them. Yet such successful learners, by virtue of their accomplishments, must be surely accounted for in any meaningful theory of other languages acquisition.
2. The cultural and enlightening purpose – to familiarize the users with the experience of self-teaching foreign languages accumulated by famous European autodidacts, including polyglots. It is regrettable that few linguists have studied polyglots and what it is they know about language learning. For their part, polyglots have not provided us with information either. This purpose is in line with the statement that biographies of individuals speaking more than one language might contain clues to the conditions of successful language acquisition.
3. The learning and practical purpose – to help the users assimilate universal technologies of self-teaching and using other languages. Achieving this goal is about the language learners’ acquiring the ability to build up, to realize, to reveal the effectiveness of, and to modify their individual models of self-teaching on the basis of comparing their own (a) language learning careers, (b) individual-psychological, communicative, and cognitive properties, (c) language learning concepts, (d) language learning technologies with those of outstanding European language self-learners.
The global purpose of creating the encyclopaedia is to eliminate the contradictions within the triangle presented below:
III. ADDRESSEES OF SETEOLA
1. Language (self) learners who will receive direct and indirect recommendations related to building up individual models of self-teaching, their functioning, revealing their effectiveness, their refinement. That is one will be informed on (a) what is self-teaching as compared to other forms of language learning, (b) the best ways to teach oneself new languages, (c) secrets of language learning in general.
2. Developers of self-teaching and other forms of mastering languages didactic assistance means who will be able to enlarge (a) their creative arsenal with new methods borrowed from the outstanding autodidacts' experience, (b) their knowledge of peculiarities of self-teaching as a form of mastering languages, second language acquisition theories, the language acquisition device (which is primarily about how are languages learned), second language learners, second language acquisition motivation.
3. Theorists in the field of self-teaching and other forms of mastering languages and its didactic assistance who, in their efforts to understand successful language learning (including self-teaching), need a lot of both experimental and experiential evidence. The latter might sometimes fit in with various theories of other languages acquisition, and sometimes challenge them. Anyway, these data need to be accounted for, which sometimes might entail modification of theories, overall or partial. This category will be able to use the SETEOLA materials for theoretical substantiation of the suggested systems, statements and solutions.
IV. APPROACHES TO CREATING SETEOLA
– a learner-centered approach focuses on the individual psychological features of the self-learner – motives and stimuli of mastering languages, his/her will properties;
– a communicative approach suggests considering a self-learner’s experience in using different languages while solving tasks of establishing and maintaining mutual understanding and interaction with various partners before, during and after learning a certain language;
– a cognitive approach predetermines dealing with (a) the perceptive, mnemonic, and intellectual properties of the self-learner, his educational background, that is (b) knowledge referring to different spheres of life, (c) learning skills, both universal and specific for mastering other languages, including self-teaching, (d) individual styles of learning languages;
– a complex approach integrates all the internal and external factors of self-teaching languages to be taken into account;
– a systemic approach provides interconnectionand interdependence of all the encyclopaedia’s components;
– an optimizing approach reveals the components of the self-teaching other languages positive experience and possible ways of their introducing into the modern process of learning languages.
V. PRINCIPLES OF CREATING SETEOLA
1. Prestigiousness of the informational sources which are endowed with it by the very fact that they contain information about outstanding European’s experience in self-teaching foreign languages.
2. Reliability of the informational sources is provided by a great number of these sources and representation in them of those person’s experience who are distinguished by their psychological, communicative, cognitive, national, age, gender, professional, and other properties. Both prestigiousness and reliability are achieved by that they include a vast array of various sources types (See VI).
3. Theoretical orientation of creating the encyclopaedia is linked to consolidation of the research foundation of the activity of all those involved in the modern language learning process in its diversified forms.
4. Practical orientation of creating the encyclopaedia is embodied in that the encyclopaedia’s contents can be readily employed in the activity of all those involved in the modern language learning process.
5. Openness of the encyclopaedia’s structure and contents to all sorts of quantitative and qualitative transformations caused by both discovering new facts about language self-learning experience and possible achievements in various fields pertaining to it – linguodidactism, linguistics, psychology, pedagogy, IT etc.
VI. SOURCES OF INFORMATION USED FOR CREATING SETEOLA:
– research sources (dissertations, books, articles, items, reports etc.);
– learning sources (textbooks, manuals, video and audiovisual courses, computer programs etc);
– cultural-elucidative sources (encyclopaedias, biographies, books, periodicals, radio- and TV programs, documentaries etc);
– artistic-cultural sources (fiction, features films, memoirs etc);
– personal everyday sources (letters, notes, diaries).
VII. STRUCTURE AND CONTENTTS OF SETEOLA
Section 1. Theory
1.1. Notional system.
1.2. Basic notions.
Section 2. Experience
2.1. Universal model.
2.2. Outstanding autolinguodidacts.
Section 3. Technology
3.1. Universal model.
3.2. Phonetics and graphics.
3.3. Vocabulary.
3.4. Grammar.
3.5. Listening and reading.
3.6. Speaking and writing.
3.7. Self-teaching skills.
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