Linguo-conceptual approach in teaching Russian as foreign language

(Ikhsangaliyeva G., Nurzhanova Zh., Kazakh National University, named after Al-Farabi, Almaty)

Recent studies in methods of teaching Russian as Foreign Language (RFL) are characterized by fixed attention to linguo-cultural competence of foreign students. The need of development of such competence poses new challenges to teachers and requires from them a new understanding of learning goals.

The value of linguo-cultural aspect in the RFL teaching is indisputable since communicative and speech errors, as well as errors of socio-cultural nature are all the result of ignorance of national and cultural peculiarities of Russian language.

The relevance of this approach lies in the fact that creation of a linguo-cultural competence among international students means not only a general knowledge of Russian language and Russian culture or just teacher's intention to lead foreign students to master an exemplary learning speech, but also to develop foreign language skills in order to communicate on the cross-cultural level and ability of adequate interaction with representatives of Russian culture.

The spectrum of opinions on the issue has revealed that linguo-cultural competence is a set of special skills necessary to operate in practice a system of knowledge about culture, embodied in a given national language. In other words, a foreign student has to develop an ability to recognize and to adequately perceive and correlate a semantic content of a language sign with associative and imaginative motivation of choice of a word through the prism of values and attitudes of his proper national culture.

Recently, modern methodology science, when refines linguistic foundations of the RFL teaching, first of all considers cognitive and pragmatic and linguo-conceptual approaches. Linguo-cultural competence is examined not only from the perspective of linguistic cultural studies, but also in the focus of linguo-cognitive coordinate system. In the process of training of foreign students, teaching techniques of linguo-cultural competence creation are based on a cognitive activity aimed at developing by student of a system of concepts; and on such a pragmatic component as a professional status of a student. Thus, language becomes a sort of cognitive process, and competence is a capacity to generate acts of consciousness. At the same time linguo-cultural competence is directly related to the study of professional language as an integral part of a professional competence. Linguo-cultural competence development of foreign students should be realized in organic connection of professional education with Russian language knowledge development within the core course studying.

As any professional group has its own conceptual picture of the world, so the learning process effectiveness to a greater degree will depend on a systematic development of a sphere of concepts, which is relevant for this group and determined by their future profession. Sphere of concepts is a structured knowledge, an information base of mental images, consisting of universal object code units. The semantic language space as a part of the sphere of concepts is verbalized in the system of linguistic signs: words, phrase combinations, syntactic structures. It is formed by the linguistic units’ meanings. A concept conceived as a unit of the sphere of concepts reflects peculiarities of thinking, worldview and culture of people. Any person can be “a concepts bearer”, as he or she has its own cultural experience and cultural identity. Thus, individual verbal activity is determined by the language sphere of concepts and national sphere of concepts.

Linguo-conceptual approach in RFL teaching offers a vision that focuses on the concept and the sphere of concepts taken as linguo-didactic units. The process of learning Russian language involves not only traditional study of phonetics, grammar, vocabulary, but also a Russian culture language mastering through its national concepts. Linguistic consciousness of foreign students is as it were immersed in the sphere of concepts of Russian language. This allows them to acquire an integral ethno-cultural knowledge of Russian culture and language. So, already existing, but segmentary linguo-culturological views transform into a cognitive integrity. There is an interaction of different cultures through the spheres of concepts of Russian culture and the culture of foreign student, due to which he understands that the language and culture he learns do not exist in isolation from his native language and culture, but, conversely, are projected on them.

Representatives of different professions categorize and verbalize same object in their own way. Therefore, it is necessary to build a linguo-cultural competence of foreign audience with concepts that meet its pragmatic needs. Those concepts should compose a cognitive base of this given profession. Thus, the learning process needs to be professionally oriented and should promote professionally meaningful types of thinking of students.

Development of linguo-cultural competence is based on the texts of different types and genres that present and record a linguo-cultural information. Texts should include the notions correlating with the basic concepts, which are relevant for international students. They should be filled with specific content, so that to model a situation, to correct the shades of a meaning of a word and to realize axiological cultural information. Since structure of the cultural concept includes notional and figurative elements, the text serves not only for a key notions semantization, but also for creation of a particular image in the mind of a student.

Professionally-oriented sphere of concepts is built gradually, within three main stages of teaching Russian language for foreign students. The initial stage of training involves understanding of basic terms and notions of Russian language and culture, which are neutral towards a professional language. At this stage, there is a simultaneous development of the terminology knowledge; lexical and grammatical competencies and speech skills. Students observe a parallel between these terms and everyday realities and realize a reflection of the naive world view in the mentality of native speakers.

During the main stage of training teacher extends the sphere of concepts by introducing a special terminology, which corresponds to a professionally-oriented conceptual view of the world. Linguo-cultural competence is based on texts of different types and genres, in which there a complete image of a specialist or a profession is created.

At the final stage, a teacher introduces the cultural realities and shows how semantic boundaries of words are expanded with a help of a new cultural knowledge with national connotations.

Linguo-cultural competence development through the concepts of Russian culture involves an appeal to synonyms, antonyms, paronyms, phraseological units. This contributes to the more efficient evolution of vocabulary and stylistic skills and deeper understanding of the text by foreign students. The system of images fixed in the lexical fund of Russian language recreates in its semantics a long process of people’s culture development, it captures the cultural attitudes and stereotypes, models and archetypes, and accumulates the national world view, cultural and national experience and traditions.

Reading, one of the types of receptive speech activities, has a particular importance for the formation of linguo-cultural competence during the main and final stages of training. The text as a source of a linguo-cultural knowledge, and the reading, in the process of which the language proficiency is progressing, - are two core scientific and practical elements in the modern methodology of RFL teaching.

The work with texts is aimed at linguo-cultural competence development and building a Russian sphere of concepts knowledge of foreign trainees. This sphere of concepts is fixed in the culturally significative texts.

Thus, choosing texts for the reading, a teacher is focused on their linguo-culturological value, relevance, learning difficulty degree and presentation graduality.