2013 Vol. 4 №3

This article shows that the dialogue of cultures is one of the fundamental socio-political needs. The author emphasises – which is an axiom for many educated people – that interactions limited to a close circle of ‘us’ impoverishes one’s life and that many values cannot be divided into ‘ours’ and ‘theirs’. The article analyses the increasing interest in Russian culture in Lithuania, as well as the motivation for learning the Russian language, which can be explained by the desire to learn and understand Russian culture, read a book, watch a move or a play, feel a poem, etc. It is stated that a certain motivation for learning the Russian language can be the increasing interest in the works of F. M. Dostoyevsky.

This article considers the problems pertaining to the need to teach not only the literary language but also the basics of colloquial Russian to international students of Russian philology. The colloquialisation of public communication, the development and availability of the Internet, and the intensification of tourist contacts result in the modification of programmes of teaching Russian as a foreign language. The author stresses the need to develop a relevant didactic framework corresponding to the demands and expectations of students.

This article describes the ways to generate motivation for learning literary Russian. Classical literary texts and works of Kaliningrad writers are considered as a means to develop the students’ emotional abilities and inspire respect for their future professions. It is stressed that introduction to the works of leading Kaliningrad authors and poets gives international students a clearer idea of Russian culture, helps them develop empathy, improve emotional and associative memory, and increase motivation for learning literary Russian.

This article focuses on the importance of developing speech and communicative skills in students of technical universities in view of the requirements of the Russian higher education system after the transition to the 3rd generation federal state education standards. A comparison of 2010—2013 survey of junior and senior students of Kaliningrad State Technical University helps come to a conclusion that the goal of teaching is to develop conscious needs in students and encourage them in individual work in order to improve the level of communicative knowledge.

This article considers the role of the sociocultural component in teaching Russian as a foreign language and analyses the means and methods of teaching aimed to develop the sociocultural competence in students. Special attention is paid to characterising the most informative — from the perspective of mental meaning explication — language system elements and the problems of presenting sociocultural information faced by the teacher of Russian in front of a foreign audience.

This article addresses the problems of appropriate perception and decoding of a folklore text in the process of learning Russian as a foreign language. The author analyses the image and concept-related cultural difficulties faced by foreigners when studying Russian folk tales. The article identifies the differences in perceiving and assessing the culturally relevant folklore motifs by recipients with different cultural mental setups. It is stressed that studying folk tales gives foreign students an idea of the culture of Russian people, their fundamental features and values, and contributes to the development of a cultural linguistic competence, which helps ensure mutual understanding with representatives of another culture.

This article offers an overview of the discipline ‘Language activation and language teaching strategy’ taught to students of philology at the University of Gdansk. It is emphasised that the course pays special attention to acquiring knowledge and its application in the course of individual studies. The results of an annual survey of junior students of Russian philology at the University of Gdansk help identify the factors of effective teaching of foreign languages.