Extralinguistic competences and skills of the foreign language class

• Author: Armasar I.P.
• Pages: 367-372

Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov

Series V: Economic Sciences • Vol. 8 (57) No. 2 - 2015

Extralinguistic competences and skills of

the foreign language class

Ioana Paula ARMĂSAR1

Abstract: The technological osmosis from all domains of activity makes it necessary for the

modern man to acquire new abilities, and especially rapidity and certainty of both

intellectual and physical reflexes. Starting from gathering information as an essential

principle, from knowing to a more intimate stage, culture must turn into a behavioral reflex,

into a spontaneous thinking act, into natural mentality. Foreign language has become a

fundamental subject in training non-philology students for everyday life. Contextualizing the

information and introducing technological culture elements as well as humanist values of

general education, the study of a foreign language through specialized language turns into a

means of orientation, adaptation, transformation, education towards a rea lity and a world

continually changing. The efforts of the foreign language teacher should be directed towards

reaching that meeting point between technology and humanities.

Key-words: culture, technology, civilization, competence, performance, specialization,

motivation

1. Introduction

If we think about culture literally (as all-around formation/development of the

individual, starting from the intellectual action up to everyday gestures, from gathering

information to behaviour and representing a fundamental acquisition of the human

species in its general evolutionary efforts but also an inexhaustible re source, a

permanent availability of every individual), we shall try to approach the relation

existing between technological culture and humanities. The global technological boom

can be nowadays translated into new life rhythms that only a few decades ago were

not imaginable. Practical efficiency has replaced the not so long ago very championed

idea of diversity. Specialization has turned into the new “disease” the world suffers

from, but at the same time represents a necessary evil in this thicket of very strati fied

domains. We are all familiar to the definition of the specialist who tends to know

everything about nothing, compared to the generalist who comes to know almost

nothing about everything. So, teaching finds itself in front of some serious hindrance

1 Transilvania University of Braşov, armasar@unitbv.ro