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Presenters
Professor  Manana Rusieshvili and Dr. Rusudan Dolidze
Faculty of Humanities, Tbilisi State University
Tbilisi, Georgia

Title
Identification of Culturally Specific Strategies in the Classroom
(a case study of role-plays performed by Georgian students)

Abstract

The concept of culture, among other parameters, includes typical patterns of behaviour common to and shared by members of a  speech community. These can be expressed by verbal (linguistic) and  non-verbal (gestures and prosodic) means.

The goal of this  paper is to present the results of a study which was carried out at Tbilisi State University  and aimed at a) enhancement of general communication skills of the students and b) identification of both culturally similar and different means of expressing certain communicative strategies, such as address forms, requests and questions in Georgian and British cultures.

The study was carried out in two stages: firstly, 40 upper-intermediate students of the final year of the Department of English language and Literature were observed and assessed by the authors while performing role-plays in English. The thematic repertoire of the role-plays selected for observation included telephone conversations, shopping and discussing public holidays in Britain and Georgia. The research focused on the choice of address forms and strategies of requests and questions used by the students while performing role-plays. Secondly, these role-plays were followed by interviews conducted by the authors during which the participants were asked to comment on their specific choices of the above-mentioned strategies. As a result of this research typical differences and similarities between the etiquette of telephone conversations, ways of building verbal and non-verbal means of questions and requests in Georgian and British languages and cultures have been identified and will be discussed in the paper.