THEORIES OF PERCEPTION AND ACQUISITION OF A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Abstract

The issue of communication occupies one of the leading places in contemporary linguistic, psychological and physiological research. The process of speech perception is considered in a number of related disciplines such as psychophysiology and physiology of speech, experimental and general phonetics, psycholinguistics and psychology of speech. Thus, in phonetics, perception is considered as a set of mechanisms that describe the transition from the primary phonetic description of a sound or sound sequence to its interpretation as a specific unit of speech. The ways and methods of generating messages, their convey and perception by recipients are considered. In the context of modern global interaction between different languages and cultures, successful communication is very essential, so research into the perception of foreign language speech by non-native speakers is extremely relevant. The article presents the results of a theoretical analysis of the characteristics and mechanisms of speech perception. It describes some of the most common psychological theories of speech perception and considers the factors that influence the perception of different speech units. The authors analyzed the main stages of speech formation and speech activity identifiying the corresponding speech patterns (models); in particular, they considered an analytical model of communication characterized by three constituents, namely communicative, interactive, and perceptual ones. In the article, the authors identify the following phases of speech activity: orientation, planning, implementation, and control, as well as the peculiarities of their implementation. The authors of the article determine the importance of the role of speech production in the communication process. The authors emphasize two phases of the process of speech perception by the communicant: actual perception and understanding of what has been heard or read.