Didactic value of a hybrid text in foreign language teaching: a survey based on Russian and Polish language material

Abstract

The subject of the analysis is hybrid (creolized, multicode) text as a genre belonging to the so called new culture of writing, whose characteristic feature is the domination of visuality, of pictorial representation in the production of texts. Nowadays, creolized texts exert significant influence on textuality and on the cultural communication process in the young generation. They also have a considerable educational value in the process of foreign language teaching. The examination of selected sub-genres of Russian and Polish hybrid messages (demotivators and public service ads) has proved the following: 1) creolized texts usually play the ludic and the attractive (fascination) function; 2) despite their miniature, compact form they constitute an integrated verbal-visual unit of expression of big semantic capacity; 3) information arrangement (narrative structure) is built through a peculiar way of configuring verbal and iconic signs, such that accounts for a whole cultural system of their potential references.
The textual category under scrutiny seems to comply with the model of “integrating didactics”, which takes into account the holistic character of learning processes since it enables the learners to fully engage in the didactic process and facilitates the forming of linguistic knowledge as well as sociocultural and communicative competence.