STUDENTS’ “LANGUAGE BARRIER”: PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS AND SOLUTIONS

Abstract

As globalization and communications are bringing the world ever closer together, ever more urgent is the need for global citizens to be competent in other languages. However, in a language class there are situations when students feel psychological tension to perform their communication skills in a foreign language. This tension also causes fear and frustration, which are the main language barrier components. The primary objective of this article is to explore methods for increasing foreign language competence of students of non-linguistic specialties by identifying factors of communication barriers and ways to overcome them.

The paper demonstrates that recognition of barriers to effective communication and productive listening is the first step to improve communication style and is a significant condition of linguistic competence formation in students. Language barrier is a serious obstacle for establishing efficient business cooperation and human relations. The article presents a research aiming to explore psychological factors, which create language barriers in students, when they speak a foreign language. The study demonstrates the existence of different kinds of language difficulties in communication that actually negatively affect students’ emotional state and cause the unwillingness to learn and use a foreign language as a way of communicating with non-native speakers. The paper offers solutions to enhance students’ motivation for learning a foreign language and create favorable conditions for formation students’ communication skills and understanding how foreign language learning can be beneficial for them.