Vol 21, No 3 (2023): Linguistic and linguodidactic issues of bilingualism

The softness of Russian consonants in the oral speech of two generations of Russian-speaking bilinguals in Germany and monolinguals in Russia is explored. The relevance of the problem is due to the importance of studying the inherited Russian language of bilinguals, comparing the phonetic features of the speech of different generations of bilinguals, as well as their comparison with the features of the speech of Russian native speakers living in Russia, the need to study the state of the Russian language in the diaspora. The research is aimed at identifying the i-glide between the consonant and the subsequent vowel, which indicates the softness of the consonant. The material of the research was 300 syllables with soft consonants in voice recordings of phonetically representative texts developed in 1988 by S.B. Stepanova and used for many years as a universal tool for studying the phonetic aspect of oral speech. Auditory phonetic analysis of combinations of a soft consonant and a subsequent vowel, instrumental analysis with the Praat computer program (version 6.0.26), comparative analysis of the data were applied. The analysis of 300 syllables with soft consonants in various positions in the word showed that in the speech of bilinguals there are cases of i-glide absence: 83 cases (27%) in the speech of children and 32 cases (10%) in the speech of parents. It was proved that such cases most often occur with sonants, soft affricates, as well as some labial and dental consonants in the middle of a word. In the speech of monolinguals, there are almost no such cases. Russian speech in Germany is influenced by the phonetic system of the German language, however, most bilinguals (both children and adults) retain i-glide between a soft consonant and a vowel, which is characteristic of the Russian language. Comparison of the results of studying consonant softness with the results of studying their voicedness shows that softness is a more stable phonetic feature of Russian consonants compared to voicedness. The data obtained may be useful not only to linguists, but also to the authors of Russian language textbooks for bilingual children, as well as Russian language teachers working in German schools.

The study is devoted to the syntactic characteristics of the Russian speech at the level of a complex sentence of two generations of Russian-German bilinguals: the speakers of inherited Russian, aged 10-15, who were born in Germany or came to Germany at an early age, and their parents, aged 35-50, who moved to Germany in 1990-2010, and the Russian monolinguals of the same age, living in Russia. The relevance of the study is due to the importance of exploring complex sentences in oral speech, as well as the need to analyze the syntactic level of Russian speech of the inherited language speakers. The aim of the study is to analyze the deviations in using complex sentences in the stories of two generations of Russian-German bilinguals and to compare them with similar deviations in the stories of Russian monolinguals. Research material: transcripts of story recordings based on pictures from the book “Frog, where are you?” by M. Mayer. Linguistic observation, descriptive, statistical and comparative methods were applied. The average share of deviations from syntactic norms in the informants' stories was revealed, the violations were ranked according to their structural types. The most typical deviations, connected with the organization of a complex sentence parts, the use of connective and correlative words, were established. It is noted, that the speech of children has much more deviations from syntactic norms, than the speech of their parents. This fact is explained by a higher level of education of parents. In the speech of bilinguals, more deviations from syntactic norms were revealed than in the speech of monolinguals, which is caused by the different status of the Russian language in Germany and Russia. The conclusion is made about the perspective of the structural approach to the analysis of the syntactic features of the oral speech of different categories of Russian native speakers at the level of a complex sentence.

The lexical parameters of oral stories of two generations of Russian-German bilinguals and the function of lexical means in the narrative strategy implementation are describes. Through addressing the oral narrative this study is included in the range of modern works considering the features of text generation by bilinguals. The relevance of the study lies both in the material and in the chosen methods of analysis. The aim of the study is to identify the degree of the narrative strategy formation at the lexical level among representatives of two generations of Russian-German bilinguals in comparison with monolingual Russian native speakers. The research material is a corpus of experimentally collected oral stories (47 texts) of German-Russian bilinguals. M. Mayer’s book “Frog, where are you?” was used as a stimulus for subjects. The test subjects were representatives of 22 families: children - 26 people aged 8 to 19 years, parents - 21 people aged 30 to 55 years. To compare the characteristics of the corpora, the similar corpus of oral stories of monolinguals (42 stories) was involved. Quantitative and statistical analysis, corpus analysis, thematic and semantic analysis of vocabulary, elements of structural analysis of narrative were used. The novelty of the study is the corpus analysis identification of lexical parameters of narrative strategies used by two generations of bilinguals. The analysis showed that the degree of lexical skills development in the implementation of narrative strategies in bilinguals is lower than in monolinguals in both age groups, despite the statistical similarity of the texts of both corpora. This concerns, first of all, the completeness and uniformity of the lexical expression of the mandatory components of the narrative stimulated by the material, and the relations between them in the text. At the same time, the general trend of narrative creation was in line with expectations. The identified parameters can be further methodically interpreted in order to prepare educational materials for bilinguals.

The formation of linguistic-cultural competence in the process of teaching Russian as a non-native language is becoming a priority in modern linguodidactics, in particular in the educational space of Kazakhstan. The relevance of the study is in the need to form and develop a fully educated secondary linguistic personality in the multilingual environment of modern society. This requires applying anthropocentric principle in teaching Russian as a linguistic-cultural phenomenon. The aim of the study is to form students' linguistic-cultural competence in precepting the features of the Russian picture of the world, traditional values, and mentality of the Russian ethnic group. The material of the study includes associative dictionaries of the Russian and Kazakh languages, the results of associative experiments with schoolchildren, scientific sources on psycholinguistics and cultural linguistics, Kazakh manuals and textbooks on the Russian language (in schools with Russian/Kazakh language of teaching). In the work comparative and associative experiments, pilot survey were used, as well as the methods of structuring (associative semantic gestalt according to the method of Yu.N. Karaulov), linguistic and cultural commentary, modeling situational exercises and analysis of communicative-speech acts. The results of the study illustrate the specificity of students' ethnolinguistic awareness at the associative level. The relevance of linguistic and cultural commentary for widening students' ethno-mental outlook and organising adequate intercultural dialogues is grounded. The effectiveness of associative experiments materials as a means of forming linguistic-cultural competence of students is shown.

The most important tool for the adaptation and integration of foreign-speaking children into the Russian educational space is the Russian language. In modern Russian schools, the most pressing issue is the assessment of the level of proficiency in Russian by foreign children, since in the situation of formed migration there is no common institutional complex for the diagnosis of these children's language and speech skills. It is necessary first of all to make diagnostic measurements of the ability of school children from migrant families to master school subjects in Russian. The lack of methodological tools of this kind complicates the process of adaptation of foreign language students to the educational space of the Russian school. This circumstance conditioned the tools for developing and implementing complex diagnostics aimed at determining the language skills and the level of speech competence not only of foreign-speaking children, but also of all students in educational institutions of the Domodedovo city district. The aim of the study was to determine the general didactic and methodological requirements for a foreign-speaking student in a Russian school, and to create an effective tool for defining the linguistic and socio-cultural competencies of this category of students. The research development of the diagnostic procedures carried out and their results aimed at determining the levels of Russian language proficiency among students of 5-9 grades in the polyethnic composition of the Domodedovo city district are presented. Within the framework of the study, methods of pedagogical observation, statistical method, method of diagnostic testing and expert evaluation, method of quantitative processing of the obtained data were applied. In the diagnosis 1248 students of Domodedovo city district schools took part. The testing was carried out in electronic format, which made it possible to obtain and process the results in the shortest possible time. The methodological basis for the research and development of testing materials was the manual by Elizaveta A. Khamraeva “Linguodidactic diagnostics” (the series “Russian school”), which includes tests for children aged 6-14 years, compiled on the basis of the meta-subject approach. The results of this study can serve as a content base for individual educational trajectories, based on the principles of differentiated learning, which will contribute to the successful learning of academic disciplines in accordance with the requirements of the Federal State Educational Standard in a modern multicultural school.