Lingua-cultural potential of A.P. Chekhov's short stories in teaching Russian as a foreign language

This paper presents lingua-cultural interpretation of literary text. The aim of lingua-cultural interpretation is to reveal ideas about culture facts through understanding of the text semantic structure and the analysis of its keywords. The author of the article shows potential of the lingua-cultural analysis of A.P. Chekhov’s short stories and offers tasks for work with the writer’s literary texts in the course of teaching Russian as a foreign language. It is emphasized that Chekhov’s short stories are both an invaluable cultural resource and a rich national source of language information for a foreign reader. According to the author, any literary text can convey cultural meaning through the means of the language and contain certain lingua-cultural potential which is different from one text to another. Applying a short story called “Joy” as a case study, the author of the article presents the system of stage-by-stage work using literary works of the writer to form lingua-cultural competence of students which is defined as accumulating knowledge of various objects, phenomena, situations, events of the Russian culture, etc. through the language of literature. . The author demonstrates step by step how each new task helps foreign-language readers to plunge into the content of the given text, find variety of its meanings, master the native speaker’s vocabulary, mark out features of the Russian culture, and finally come to understanding of the relations hip between the language and national culture. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the development and approbation of the algorithm of interpretation of the literary text in a foreign language classroom both in Russia and abroad. This approach can serve as means of conducting cognitive as well as speech and mental activities of foreign students and at the same time act as «the tool of understanding» of the literary text, help identify cultural information which is contained in it. The author states that the study guidance mentioned can be applied to teaching any other foreign language using literary works.