Vol 21, No 2 (2023): Digital Technologies in Russian Language Teaching: Current State and Prospects

The communicative approach to teaching Russian as a foreign language (RFL) implies that the main goal - the acquisition of communication skills - can only be achieved in a stimulative communicative environment. Meanwhile, the online format, which is currently becoming popular, is characterized by limited interaction between the participants of the educational process. Thus, the problem of developing methodological foundations for a productive communicative environment in the process of online teaching is becoming acute for the methodology of teaching RFL. The aim of this study is to describe the features of educational communication, determined by Chinese cultural and educational traditions, on the material of monolingual groups from China studying Russian in Russian universities, and to develop a methodological framework for creating a productive communicative environment for synchronous RFL online lessons, considering the specifics of students' communicative behavior. The study material included 10 synchronous online RFL lessons with a total duration of 15 hours and 51 minutes. Monolingual groups of Chinese students (A2-B2) participated in the lessons. A content analysis method using Atlas.ti software was applied to process the results. Coding was based on a deductive approach with elements of inductive approach; the coding system was based on the category of social presence, operationalized and adapted to the specifics of RFL learning. The prevalence of several communication behavior patterns among Chinese students, which conflict with the current methodological principles, was shown. At the same time, deviations from conventional behavior of Chinese students at the analyzed RFL classes were observed. This suggested that despite the strong influence of cultural attitudes, the parameters of the communicative environment of an online lesson may vary depending on the teacher's efforts. It is argued that the formation of communicative environment of a synchronous online RFL lesson requires that the teacher possesses the ability to manage the interactivity of communication, to form an atmosphere of cooperation and cohesion in the online group, to maintain emotionality of online communication. The study contributes to the development of digital language teaching, forming a scientific basis for creating methodological technologies of a productive educational environment in RFL online teaching.

Teaching a foreign language within the framework of an online course has its specifics. Control in such courses is characterised by a lack of feedback from the teacher (only self-learning of course materials is assumed), a decrease in the individualization of learning, an increase in the role of students' independent work, which leads to the use of a method of mutual checking and the associated need to develop students' cognitive abilities for self-assessment of the results of mastering an online course. The development of such abilities is particularly relevant in the online course “Russian as a foreign language”, where students need to evaluate texts in a foreign language. The aim of the research is to introduce conceptually a step-by-step training model for introducing peer review tasks within an online course in Russian as a foreign language and evaluate its effectiveness. The peer checking assignments in the block “We write in Russian” from the massive online course “Russian as a foreign language. B1+” on the “Otkrytoye Obrazovaniye” (Open Education) platform were used as the data for the study. The general scientific method of analysis and synthesis, targeted observation and the modeling method were applied. An overview of the main research papers on the forms of control in massive online courses is given. Attention is drawn to such features of control in a distance learning course as the lack of feedback from the teacher, a decrease in the individualization of learning, an increase in the role of students' independent work, and the related need to develop students' cognitive abilities to evaluate a text according to the developed criteria. The stages of formation of the cognitive procedures of different levels are considered - from the level of rules to the cognitive level associated with the students' awareness of their cognitive strategies, their effectiveness, as well as the ability to independently assess their language and speech level. As the result of the study, the authors present a training model of tasks aimed at forming students’ competence of an “expert” who can check the peer checking tasks. It is concluded that students can adequately evaluate each other's academic work, using the proposed evaluation parameters, taking into account the type of the text, its genre, and the typical language means of its implementation. The submitted step-by-step training model of tasks for peer review can be successfully used in teaching other foreign languages at different levels.

The parametric model of the text as a research problem is of paramount importance in modern linguistics and education, since it opens up new approaches to understanding the processes of comprehending texts of various types. In the current study, 17 Russian language textbooks for elementary school were employed to identify correlations between lexical diversity indices and other complexity predictors. The total volume of the corpus compiled for the study is 439,938 words. The two-stage research algorithm included the evaluation of the reference values of text features at the basic level (word length, sentence length, the number of unique, non-repeating words and the number of word forms), evaluation and subsequent contrasting of complexity predictors, i.e. lexical diversity and readability indices. All calculations were performed with the automatic text analyzer RuLingva. The study revealed a positive dynamic of readability and no evidence of lexical diversity increase across grades. An average level of vocabulary diversity and overlaps of every 4th word in the text are fixed. No indication of correlation between text readability and lexical diversity is found. The obtained results can be useful to researchers, textbook authors, and teachers selecting textbooks. The prospects are seen in implementing functional and epidigmatic stratification of the vocabulary of the Russian textbooks under study.

The comprehensive study of the title of the novel “Crime and Punishment” by F.M. Dostoevsky as a source of precedence in the texts of Russian media is presented. The relevance of the research is determined by the need to study fiction as a valuable source of precedence in modern media discourse. Manipulative nature of modern media implies the expansion of the spheres-sources of precedence, appealing to the cultural background of the Russian linguistic culture bearers. The authors prove that the formation of the actual media space is based on a wide set of connotatively marked linguistic means, used as a tool to influence the potential reader. On the example of the precedent construction “Crime and Punishment”, appealing to the title of the famous novel by F.M. Dostoevsky, semantic-pragmatic and transformational features of precedent constructions and the specificity of their associative potential in the perception and interpretation in the Russian linguistic culture are illustrated. The research material includes texts of electronic media covering international, state, and regional issues and problems from 2017 to 2022. The research results are ensured by a wide repertoire of publications reflecting various aspects of society and state development. The card index included contexts (corpus of 120 examples), objectifying important social, economic, and political problems for modern society. The component and contextual analysis, distributive method, linguistic modeling were applied. Further study of the precedent phenomena appealing to fiction could present a valuable fragment of the media picture of the world, including the corpus of texts significant for the Russian linguistic culture.