Features Of Communicative Culture Of Modern Russian Students

Abstract

Information revolution is characterized by the explosive development of communications. Since modern society is evaluated as a knowledge society, the use of new information and communication capabilities is especially relevant. Communicative culture is formed from the very birth of a person. Special requirements are imposed on the communicative culture of specialists, which defines the tasks of close attention to the process of the formation of a communicative culture in higher education. People who have not only an education that meets social needs, but also relevant communication skills have professional and social success. In the context of the risk space expansion, such communication skills should cover both the professional sphere and the sphere of socio-political interactions. This dictates the need to include in the process of the formation of a student’s communicative culture actions that involve the development of their political culture. In the periods of dramatic social changes, they help young people not only to solve vital issues, but also to prepare them for real life, including through the development of communication skills. This practice is considered in the article on the example of one of the oldest Russian universities – Moscow Automobile and Road Construction State Technical University (MARCST), in which the formation of the student communicative culture is as close as possible to university specialization, reflecting the policy of satisfying the needs of a person and state economy in a high-quality, economical and safe transport services.

Keywords: Educationhigh schoolstudentscommunication culture

Introduction

Under the conditions of an incredibly fast expansion of information flows, people are increasingly faced with the difficulties of not only finding answers to existing issues of professional and everyday spheres, but also to the issues of basic communication. Under the threat of substitution of direct communication with virtual, the value of communication is noticeably increasing, and a communicative culture is becoming an essential element in life skills of each person. It acts as a component of the basic culture of a person, provides a person’s readiness for life self-determination, the establishment of harmonious relations with the surrounding reality. Such a culture is a means of creating the inner world of an individual and the wealth of its content; also it helps to solve emerging problems.

Despite the fact that a communicative culture is formed from the very birth of a person, society has social institutions that are directly responsible for the acquisition of knowledge and communication skills (Jablin & Sias, 2001; Sadovskaya & Remizov, 2011; Spitzberg, 2000). A new society, which is still rightly called the knowledge society, requires comprehensively educated, competent specialists with high creative potential. In addition to training, they should have knowledge of the specifics and norms of business relations, be able to establish contacts and communicate effectively under the conditions of increased information pressures and lack of time, formulate goals and objectives of communication, negotiate, reasonably and competently argue their position, speak publicly to a large audience, show verbal flexibility, overcome existing contradictions, prevent and resolve conflicts that arise, reach agreement, etc.

Problem Statement

The intellectual equipment received in high school is not enough to meet the innovative needs of society and an individual. The prestige of higher professional education is still high. The educational process in higher education contributes to the training of professionals with the necessary competencies. However besides it, a student environment itself, into which the future specialist is immersed, should be considered as a huge potential of creative energy. In particular, it is implemented in the participation of students in various civic initiatives and social movements aimed at the solution of pressing socio-economic and socio-political problems, and development of their own communication skills necessary in future professional activities (Ternovaya, 2019). At the beginning of the XXI century, higher educational institutions remain decisive in the development of a professional culture of a specialist. However, their role is not limited to this, because along with the professional component, the tasks of higher education include the introduction of a student into national and global culture, as well as the preparation of a socially responsible person who acts as the bearer of certain civilization and cultural values (Assmann, 2011; CCU, 2011; Pohl, 2013).

Research Questions

Global information and technical changes put forward fundamentally new requirements not only for student professional training, but also for the way how easily they can adapt to these changes, solving more and more complex and sometimes unexpected professional tasks. Such skills reflect a fundamentally different quality of communicative culture compared to its models of the pre-information era. It is logical that the problems of the communicative culture of students were reflected in the works of a number of researchers (Ivanov, 2004; Nurmanov, 2014; Salnikova, 2012). In these works, the evolution of such a culture is traced, its differences among students of different training profiles are highlighted, its special value is emphasized in international student environment, etc. However, with the exception of a small number of works, the authors practically do not raise the problem of the influence of the communicative culture of student youth on the formation of a professional culture of a specialist (Hürsen et al., 2011; Mutanova et al., 2017).

A number of researchers draw attention to discrepancies in the subject fields of a communicative and future professional culture. The reason for this can be explained by the fact that the level of development of the communicative skills of students is very low. As a result of this, the very factor of forms, methods, and means of the formation of a communicative culture of university youth in the learning process is ignored when analyzing not only activity, but also the views and values of young people. In addition, one of the grounds for removing the topics of student communicative culture from the educational context is such an obvious circumstance that teachers representing the older generation with other cultural preferences, views and ideals are involved in its development.

Purpose of the Study

In fact, with the rapid changes in education, relying not only on intellectual, but also emotional capital, introducing new technologies into the educational process, expanding the space of independent work in which students are constantly encouraged to express themselves creatively, the practice of conducting classes is becoming a thing of the past, boiling down to the fact that in a lecture room most often only a teacher speaks, and students almost do not get involved in a conversation on a particular issue. If earlier it was permissible to motivate that too much training material should be completed in a very short interval, indicated most often by an academic lesson, so there was simply no time to chat, then information technologies simplify and accelerate the acquisition of the required amount of knowledge.

Now a teacher must give a certain form to this knowledge, introduce it into the general system, update, focus students on the most complex aspects of a particular problem, including those that go beyond the scope of the subject, showing, for example, that any technical problem can have economic, legal, political or sociocultural consequences. Such a pedagogical device establishes intersubject communications, but even more it lays the foundations of a wide communicative space in which students will have to be in the future in their own profession, in the cultural environment as well as in public life.

Research Methods

In the formation of a communicative culture during training sessions, a teacher must persistently overcome the passivity and laziness of students observed during the organization of communicative acts. Silence on the part of students in a classroom is often an alarming symptom of not just a lack of interest in a topic, but rather a lack of attention to surrounding life. This often provokes a reaction of self-isolation of young people. It is necessary to add that students are sometimes silent because of their insecurity, fear of making a mistake during their answer, fear of being ridiculed by classmates during a failed attempt to give a clear and good structured answer. For this reason, many students do not show their speech potential. However, behind this, the fault of a teacher lies, who can not properly establish the educational process and prevent such situations.

In this regard, the following question inevitably arises: how students can develop their communication skills in this case? The answer to this question lies, firstly, in the plane of the increase of student self-esteem; and, secondly, in the introduction of active learning methods (ALM) into the educational process, that is, such pedagogical actions and techniques that are directly aimed at the enhancement of educational process and motivation of students to learn the educational material independently and creatively.

However, the disclosure of the student’s creative and communicative potential also depends on introducing topics into the context of the academic work that are of general social relevance, reflecting not only the current series of events, but also that part of historical experience that has a cultural and educational character. There can be no obstacles in the form of highly specialized problems of a particular academic discipline, because they all involve the development of both professional and general cultural competencies.

Within the framework of general cultural competencies, due attention is paid to the formation of the speech culture of a student (Belyakova et al., 2016; Mironova, 2014). It is impossible to ignore the fact that student replicas in a classroom often have nothing to do with independently and consciously constructed statements. Most often in the course of their answer students pronounce exactly what a teacher wanted to hear and what he “hinted” by posing the so-called “leading” questions. Often, the answers of students to the questions of a teacher are in complete logically not constructed sentences, but only keywords or phrases. Often this satisfies teachers. There is no doubt that with such a course of events, the level of the communicative culture of students will continue to be far from perfect.

The vocabulary of a modern student combines diverse elements. In addition to commonly used words, it includes jargon, reduced and colloquial vocabulary and foreign words (most often English loan words, acting in various modifications and abbreviations). Unfortunately, the vocabulary of young people is littered with obscene vocabulary (dirty, shameless), emotive-expressive characteristics, parasitic words, dyshemisms (expressions, the impact of which on a listener is shocking, insulting, degrading human dignity). Body language is also far from perfect, since invectives (insult by gestures, poses and words) exacerbate the already understated stylistic coloring of speech. In the formation of a student communicative culture, the task is to overcome these shortcomings. In addition, a person speech baggage is constantly enriched. It reflects almost all significant changes in social reality. This fact also needs to be taken into account in educational and non-class work with students.

Modern young people spend most of their free time alone with all kinds of media, which provide an excellent opportunity to get information, but, unfortunately, deprive the younger generation of the opportunity to learn how to build their communication with other people. The lack of live communication reduces the effectiveness of communication. Today it is not enough to be a good specialist, it is also necessary to be an excellent employee, which means the ability to work in a team for a common result, participate in decision-making, the ability to make clear the meaning of one’s statement and the point of view to others. In addition, it is necessary to be able to work with information using various information technologies, productively resolve conflicts, and publicly present the results of your work, taking into account substantive criticism; be able to positively build their relationships. If we define the main meaning of education as the development of practical abilities and skills necessary for a person to achieve success in personal, professional and public life, then communicative competencies is one of important components.

Communicative competence, along with a communicative orientation, acts as a criterion of a communicative culture. The communicative competence of a specialist can be characterized as a certain level of formation of personal and professional experience in the interaction with others. It is necessary for an individual in order to successfully function in a professional environment and society within his abilities and social status. In this regard, competencies differ in the following way: communicative competence in a special (practical) sphere, communicative competence in personal sphere and communicative competence in socio-political sphere.

The formation of the communicative culture of a future employee is a complex multifaceted process, during which there should be a targeted pedagogical impact on all its components - cognitive, emotional and behavioral. The solution to this problem is the active use of pedagogical technologies in educational process. A teacher of higher education system needs to be able to listen and understand, explain and prove, ask and answer, convince and create an atmosphere of trust in conversation and business spirit in an interview, find an individual psychological approach to a student, resolve conflicts and relieve tension. The basis of such activities is the communicative technique of communication, the possession of which is an important indicator of professional suitability.

Findings

Of course, there are no single patterns for the formation of a communicative culture of students. This task is concretized depending on the direction of training, the cultural and historical context and the location of higher educational institution and its traditions. In this sense, Moscow Automobile and Road Construction State Technical University (MARCST) not only has more than eighty years of history and is associated with one of the main problems of Russia, which is its roads, it also acts as a leading scientific, educational and methodological center for the preparation of bachelors, graduates, masters and scientific personnel in the field of construction of roads, bridges and airfields, operation and maintenance of transport equipment, economics, management and logistics in transport and construction society, automated control systems and traffic management.

Nowadays the mission of MARCST is formulated as a scientific and educational activity in order to meet the needs of person and state economy in high-quality, economical and safe transport services, in the development of motorization - an integral part of the transport system of Russia, ensuring its unity and integrity. The variety of forms of student activity at MARCST indicates the interest of students in their existence and the desire to expand the spectrum of their activities so as to obtain the necessary knowledge and skills, and be useful to society in the professional segment in which they are trained at the university. For example, the SEG MADI Formula Student team became the first participant in Formula SAE from Russia, debuting in 2006 at competitions in Germany.

The practice of work with students studying at MARCST shows the effectiveness of the formation of a communicative culture of students using such forms and methods of educational work, which contain an interactive component. We are talking about discussions, conversations, lectures, dialogues, seminars, conferences, brainstorming, communication training. The implementation of the conditions for the provision of intensive speech practice in a relatively free creative atmosphere is facilitated by the use of role play. Role-based communication has great potential for the improvement of knowledge through the formation and activation of students' skills and creative thinking, cognitive and communicative activities. (Cuadrado et al., 2013).

Conclusion

The leading place among the methods found in the arsenal of global and national pedagogical practice and aimed at the formation of communicative competence belongs today to the project method, which allows each student demonstrating a genuine interest not only in a materialized product obtained during its implementation, but also in the process itself its implementation, which is accompanied by building a complex system of communication relationships, behavioral aspects, the project activity itself, i.e. through holistic and at the same time multifaceted interaction with other people, with social institutions in a specific situation, which has its own special economic, spiritual and political characteristics.

The use of information technology in activities opens up new ways to improve professional competence, the main of which are: the expansion of access to educational information; the formation of students' communication skills and communication culture, the ability to search for information; the organization of operational consulting assistance; the organization of joint research projects, etc.

The features of communicative skills consist in the fact that they provide actions that: firstly, must be consciously oriented towards a reciprocal respond; secondly, in addition to the implementation of the subject matter, they transmit to an addressee the features of identity of a sender of information; thirdly, they are emotionally coloured and can be carried out only at the mental level, without manifesting themselves externally. The authors note that the outgoing person is quite easy, actively joins the communication of any complexity. In this regard, it opens up much greater opportunities. Such students are less likely to have conflicts with fellow students, which give them reason to establish friendly, comradely, professional relations with others.

Thus, a communicative culture acts as one of the most important mechanisms for harmonizing personal and public interests, which include a wide range of interests of a modern specialist. The strategy of vocational training should be aimed at the formation of a spiritually developed cultural personality, not only possessing a holistic, humanistic attitude to social realities, but also a high level of communicative culture.

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