Abstract:

Foreign languages are playing a very important part in people’s activities and understanding foreign cultures provides us with opportunities for establishing both business and personal contacts. Students need not only knowledge of a foreign language, but also the one of the native speakers’ world-view, e.g. their image of the world they live in.

Thus, learning a foreign language implies forming mental images, while the most interesting problem is forming mental images of students living in a relatively small linguistic environment.

For distinguishing and understanding the most important characteristics of the mental images formed, experimental research was carried out. The aim of this research is to investigate the formation of mental images created using speech stimuli.

The experiment showed the following;
- The key role in forming mental images is played by the verbal stimulus, while the visual one is considered to be of additional value.
- The mental images created with the use of pictures or pictures and texts (creolized texts) were defined as more vivid than those created with texts only: Less realistic pictures form mental images evaluated higher than those formed by more realistic ones.

In conclusion, it is important to say that this research provides us with useful information about the factors affecting mental images’ formation. The results of the experiment are very important from both theoretical and practical points of view.

The article was prepared with the support of the RSF, grant No. 1718-01642 “Development of a communicative model of the verbal process in the context of the language model crisis”, Institute of Linguistics (RAS).

Keywords:

Language teaching, mental image, foreign language, creolized text, semantic differential.