Phraseological units of the Russian language with the ‘salt’ component as one of the means of developing the language consciousness of foreign university students

Statement of the problem. The article studies the level of formation of the linguistic and cultural concept ‘salt’ in the linguistic approach of first-year foreign university students. The problem of the research is the search for means and methods for developing the linguistic consciousness of students at the lessons of Russian as a foreign language. The purpose of the article is to present the author’s methodological recommendations for developing the level of formation of linguocultural competence among foreign university students during Russian language lessons using phraseological units and linguocultural information about salt. Methodology (materials and methods). The research methodology included analysis of scientific literature, experiment, measurement, description, and classification. Research materials: scientific and methodological literature on the research issue, historical and cultural literature, folk art texts, paremiological fund of the Russian language, and experiment results. Research results. The purpose of the conducted experimental study was to determine the level of knowledge among foreign university students in the field of Russian culture and paremiology in relation to the concept of ‘salt’. The results of the experiment indicate difficulties in understanding speech utterances containing the lexeme ‘salt’. The methodological scenario of the lesson is aimed at forming the conceptual sphere of the concept ‘salt’ in the linguistic consciousness of university students and at developing their speech skills.