course, comparing the English- speaking customs and lifestyle with Ukrainian. People living in varied cultures handle many small daily things differently. What a dull world that would be if it weren't true! But regrettably, most of us are quite unfamiliar and uninformed in regard to other lands. So, our aim, as teachers of English, is to involve students in discussing and comparing different customs, at least Slavonic with the English-speaking ones. We should better develop in our youth the feeling of cosmopolitanism than extreme nationalism or ethnocentrism, while the rest of the world heads for integration. We are all being inevitably influenced simultaneously by the traditions of the West and the East without any hassels of geographical boundaries. The latter have been gradually becoming vaguer. Still, depending on the culture we should follow some of the rules of behavior in public, in business and even at parties. A.R. Lanier in her book "Living in the USA" stresses that "...our people, having come from so many nationalities, get a wider range of what is "acceptable" than in most of the countries, where the inhabitants have grown up with a common heritage" (3; 4). As a result no one needs to feel uncomfortable in following his or her own customs. Although Americans are used to hyphenating their nationality, even taking into consideration the "Melting Pot" theory of social change, most of them lack knowledge of the other lands. But it's worth saying that each person can do his or her own thing and be respected in the USA to a large extent.
Perhaps, we should strongly recommend our students reading the two world-famous books by V.Ovchinnikov: "The Roots of Oak" - about the English and "A Branch of Sakura" - about the Japanese. With a great talent of a journalist the author describes these people. Students could get to know more about the conservative but rather friendly and polite Englishmen, who love their pets and are too strict with their children. V. Ovchinnikov also provides a number of proverbs and sayings for detailed cross-cultural studying. The writer can't help adding that to know a foreign language to perfection means to understand the country's humour, which is especially true of the English, whose jokes are rather ironic and therefore offensive for strangers.
It appears, the reason "culture shock" occurs is that we aren't prepared for the ethnographic differences and because of the way we are taught of culture, we are ethnocentric. According to J.Friedl, "ethnocenrism is a belief that one's own patterns of behavior are the best, the most natural, beautiful, right and important" (2; 197). Our students should be aware that such point of view is incompetent, even dangerous, considering the consequences it can lead to. Therefore other people, to the extent that they live differently, live by standards that are inhumane, irrational, unnatural or wrong. It seems to be a kind of racist ideas, rather hostile and aggressive. "Ethnocentrism is a view that one's own culture is better than all others; it is the way all people feel about themselves as compared to outsiders. There's no one in our society who isn't ethnocentric to some degree, no matter how liberal or open-minded he or she might claim to be" (2; 197). Anthropologists who study other cultures think, that it's something you should constantly be aware of, so that when we are tempted to make value judgements about another way of life, we can look at the situation more objectively, taking our bias into account.
So, we, teachers, should try our best to introduce the students to the varied and valuable heritage of not only English or American culture in many aspects of it, like: myths, folktales, proverbs and language, but to the peculiarities of non-Western civilizations as well. Our idea is not to make someone repulsive or ignorant about the other countries. We should keep in mind the saying: "Tastes differ" and respect foreign people and their cultures granting them the status of human-beings, but not call them "barbarians" as we used to do.
As a result of our investigation, we could draw the following conclusions:
We'd insist on the importance of the Dialogue between the cultures for the students learning foreign languages,
speech.
Combining philosophic ideas of Dj. Krishnamurti with A. Huxely's and B. Russell's could promote the introduction of the most up-to-date ways in teaching foreign languages through "the Dialogue among civilizations".
Bibliography
Tomorrow's Mind & Body // English Learner's Digest. - 1997. - № 23. - Р. 4-5.
J. Friedl. Ethnocentrism // Mosaic - I (A Reading Skills Book / Brenda Wegman, Miki Prijic Knezevic. - Р. 190198.
A.R. Lanier. Living in the USA // Mosaic - I (A Reading Skills Book) / Brenda Wegman, Miki Prijic Knezevic. -
