2001'4, p.68
Tsvetkova T. K.
The problem of consciousness in the context of foreign language teaching
(RESUME)

Through acquiring a language a human being is included in the sociocultural context of the development of consciousness. This statement is true with regard to both the mother tongue and the foreign language being learned. But there is a crucial difference: A child learning to speak his mother tongue attributes linguistic meanings to a nonverbal picture of the world while an individual learning a foreign language already possesses a "verbalized" image of the world formed with the help of his mother tongue. This "verbalized image", or linguistic consciousness, serves as a frame of reference which the individual uses to give meaning to the elements of the foreign language being learned. Thus those meanings are interpreted according to the laws of the mother tongue and the image of the foreign language that forms itself in the student's mind has little in common with reality. To avoid that, foreign language teaching should address itself to the cognitive level of the student's mind which means, first, that foreign language material should be presented with regard to its place and role in the overall structure of the language and, second, that the student should be made aware of what meanings he/she transmits while using this or that foreign language in speech.