Professionally and nationally oriented methodology of teaching Russian as a foreign language

Российский университет дружбы народов имени Патриса Лумумбы

Профессионально и национально ориентированная методика преподавания русского языка как иностранного

Introduction. Learning a foreign language is a rather long and time– consuming process. At the same time linguopedagogy in one form or another has always sought to accelerate it, which was dictated by the urgent need to master the language in the shortest possible time period – mainly for the purposes of professional inter-cultural communication. In fact, the history of the methodology of teaching foreign languages has developed and moved forward under the influence of this very need: the historical and methodological path from the grammatical-translation method to the communicative-activity method reflects the search by methodologists for a kind of “philosopher s stone” that would allow them to begin success- fully using language as a means of interethnic communication as soon as possible. The emergence of natural, direct, consciously comparative, consciously practical, various indirect, communicative, combined, and finally, a variety of intensive (suggestope-dic) methods in the future had a single goal – to quickly but qualitatively form foreign-language competencies, increase the effectiveness of mastering communicative skills, thereby making mastering a foreign language optimal in terms of timing.

In modern times, in the age of high speeds, computerization and technological modernization of various spheres of activity and life in general, in modern conditions of globalization and multilingualism, dictating certain changes in the way of life and education, learning one language to the level of a confident user simply cannot last for decades. The need to rationalize this process is beyond doubt, which means that Russian linguodi-dactics today has to further search for methods that are most adequate to its new needs. Thus, early professionalization in learning a foreign language for educational and special purposes is an urgent problem and requires consistent rationalization of the language learning process, which requires a deliberate integration of diverse methodological developments of the past years in the language education of foreign students.

The purpose of the article is, through a retrospective analysis of the development of professionally oriented and nationally oriented approaches to RFL training, to find points of correlation and outline the possibilities of synthesizing the two methods, as well as to identify the key problems arising from their mutual integration.

A retrospective analysis of the development of the described methods of teaching a foreign language. Compared to professionally oriented training, the nationally oriented approach has a much earlier background. Its beginnings, perhaps, can be seen back in the era of the dominance of the grammatical-translation method, which equalized the phenomena of the native and the studied language through gram-

ПРОФЕССИОНАЛЬНО И НАЦИОНАЛЬНО ОРИЕНТИРОВАННАЯ МЕТОДИКА ПРЕПОДАВАНИЯ РУССКОГО ЯЗЫКА

КАК ИНОСТРАННОГО

КАЖУРО ДМИТРИЙ ВАЛЕРЬЕВИЧ

Российская Федерация, Москва

DMITRII V. KAZHURO

Moscow, Russian Federation

ДЕНИСУЛТАНОВА ВЛАДА ДЕНИСОВНА

Российская Федерация, Москва

VLADA D. DENISULTANOVA

Moscow, Russian Federation

matical comparisons and translation, maintaining its authority in the practice of teaching foreign languages until the end of the XIX century. The direct method, which later became widely recognized, proclaimed as its doctrine a complete rejection of any appeal to the student s native language, however, in Russia the practice of teaching Russian by direct methods still included elements of compar- ison, which, according to A.A. Miroly-ubov, is explained by the strength of tradition and significant differences between the Russian language and other European [8, p. 34]. On this basis, even in pre-revolutionary Russia, approaches to learning are gradually being formed, based on a comparison of the facts of two languages and a grammatical description of a foreign language, taking into account the specifics of the native language. Thus, already at the end of the XIX century, a method gradually began to emerge, which was later called consciously comparative, but received its final formalization only much later. This was preceded by the unconditional dominance of the direct method in post-revolutionary methodology, attempts to create combined methods and numerous dis- putes about the role and place of the native language in the practice of teaching a foreign language, among which the opinion of L.V. Shcherba and E.M. Ryt, who mercilessly criticized the direct method, is especially authoritative. Finally, since the 1930s, the ideas of supporters of the consciously comparative method have begun to prevail in Russian methodology: E.D. Polivanov, S.I. Bernstein, I.V. Rakhmanov. And although in practice this method turned out to be ineffective due to the excess of theoretical comparisons, generalizations and rules that did not solve the problem of practical language acquisition, nevertheless, such shortcomings served as an impetus for further search for more advanced ways of consciously learning a foreign language. Thus, by the 1960s, the consciously practical method of B.V. Belyaev was developing. Largely due to the orientation towards a conscious approach, the principle of taking into account the native language becomes one of the basic principles of the Russian as a foreign language (RFL) teaching methodology in this period, one of the first nationally oriented textbooks is being developed, comparative linguistic studies are being published (Ramsina T.A., Kopylova G.I. Russkij jazyk (dlja lic, govorjashhih na ispanskom jazyke), 1962; Zahava-Nekrasova E.B., Rassu-dova O.P., Rozhkova G.I. i dr. Ucheb-nik russkogo jazyka dlja lic, govor-jashhih na nemeckom jazyke, 1964; Vaneeva V.N., Vishnjakova T.A., Ostapenko V.I. Uchebnik russkogo jazyka dlja lic, govorjashhih na fran-cuzskom jazyke, 1965). “Accounting for the native language” is interpreted as “the most rational and effective set of methods for teaching this educational material in its arrangement, dictated by the logic of the studied language, presentation and consolidation of the facts of the studied language through the prism of the native language” [6, p. 70].

In parallel, the development of a professionally oriented RFL teaching methodology was underway. Since for foreign applicants and interns of Russian universities, the Russian lan- guage is a tool for obtaining higher education, in the mid-50s, the term “accounting for a specialty” was also proclaimed one of the basic principles of teaching RFL. From this moment on, in linguistics and linguodi-dactics, «attention is paid not only to the scientific style as a whole, but also to the scientific and technical, natural science and humanitarian substyles, as well as sublanguages of individual sciences» [5, p. 206]. Targeted educational literature is being developed for students of natural science, engineering, social, humanitarian and philological profiles. According to the same principle, based on the student s future specialty, study groups are also completed, which is why native speakers of a wide variety of languages tend to be in the same audience. In these conditions, a nationally oriented approach is not applicable, therefore, textbooks of a general type become the main ones for teaching foreigners Russian as a specialty language.

However, this state of affairs has by no means led to a complete abandonment of research in the field of nationally oriented RFL education. The supporters of the consciously comparative method, which did not justify itself, continued to “work on mistakes” in its implementation, which eventually gave justification for some expansion of the “powers” of the student s native language in the practice of teaching a foreign language. Vera Nikolaevna Wagner, the author of the methodology of national-linguistic orientation of teaching the target language, became the brightest representative of this direction. Vera Nikolaevna argues that the term “accounting for the native language” is untenable: “The task is not only to take into account the influence of the source language system, but also to create an appropriate learning strategy. Orientation to the language of students is not one of the principles, but the linguodidactic basis of this methodology, on which its individual principles are implemented: consciousness, consistency, functional-semantic approach, communicative ori- entation, adequate forms and methods of teaching are determined” [2, p. 60– 61]. V.N. Wagner s approach is based on the provisions of psycholinguistics, on a cross-cutting comparative analysis of the phenomena of the native and the studied language, the analysis of interference errors, suggesting on this basis the construction of the only correct strategy for teaching the target language (Russian) for a certain linguistic contingent. In this regard, it is proposed to transform the principle of taking into account the native language into the principle of relying on the student s native language, the consistent application of which is marked by the author s nationally oriented textbooks, and in particular, the textbook “Russian for English speakers” (1983).

In the 1990s, with the changing political situation in Russia, the contingent of foreigners studying Russian and the purpose of studying it also changed markedly. There are many foreign citizens in the country who arrived in Russia for business purposes and who want to study Russian as a means of professional communication, and not for the purpose of obtaining higher education in their specialty, which inevitably had to affect the content of education. This influenced the forming of another branch of the professionally oriented methodology – teaching Russian as a means of business communication. It should be noted here that within the framework of this area of professional lin-guodidactics, attempts have already been made to create textbooks that combine the features of a professionally and nationally oriented approach. This is a series of textbooks “The Russian language in business communication”, published under the same name for different countries (Klobukova L.P., Mikhalkina I.B., Khavronina S.A., 1997, 2003, 2005).

In addition, since the 90s, the number of incoming applicants from the Far East and, most of all, from China has been rapidly increasing at Russian universities: in some cases, the Chinese account for up to 80% of the total flow of foreigners. In re-

ПРОФЕССИОНАЛЬНО И НАЦИОНАЛЬНО ОРИЕНТИРОВАННАЯ МЕТОДИКА ПРЕПОДАВАНИЯ РУССКОГО ЯЗЫКА КАК ИНОСТРАННОГО sponse to a new social order, by the year 2008, the “Textbook of the Russian Language for Chinese Speakers” was published by T.M. Balykhina, I.F. Evstigneeva, S. Zhongli and others. In connection with this new milestone in the history of Russian methodology, it is worth noting that in modern theory and practice of teaching RFL, in addition to two areas of professionally oriented learning, there are also two varieties of nationally oriented methodology: the first can be conditionally called linguo-ori-ented (V.N. Wagner s methodology), and the second – ethno-oriented. The second type in the choice of teaching methods and means is based not so much on the language of the students as on their national mentality, culture of behavior, ethnocognitive characteristics and traditions (primarily education) in their native country. T.M. Balykhina became the ideologist of the ethno-oriented methodology. The main provisions of this approach are set out by her in a joint monograph with Zhao Yujiang “From methodology to ethnomethodology. Teaching Chinese to Russian: problems and ways to overcome them” [1].

N.V. Krasnokutskaya notes that, “despite certain achievements in theoretical and linguistic and in theoretical and methodological research of the problem under discussion and successful experience in creating textbooks for native speakers of different languages, the nationally oriented methodology has not become the main direction in teaching Russian to foreigners, which is explained by reasons of an extra-linguistic and non-methodological nature, namely the lack of large monolingual groups of foreign students” [7, р. 346]. This was often the reason for the cooling of researchers interest in the possibilities of nationally oriented education.

However, as L.V. Moskovkin notes, in the history of science, the development of methods of teaching foreign languages is largely subject to the law of cyclicity, according to which the rejection of one methodological concept in favor of another is almost always temporary, up to the stage of some disappointment in the more popular of the concepts. Then science turns back to past experience, revives and modifies previous methodological views, which, as a rule, leads to their further development on a new turn of history: “a methodological concept is being formed; at a certain stage it ceases to meet the needs of society, and it is changed to the opposite concept (based on other principles of learning); after a while it is changed to a third concept that retains the features of the first; it is replaced by a new, fourth concept that inherits the features the second, etc.” [9, p. 176].

Recently, in pedagogy in general and in linguodidactics of RFL in particular, “interest in personality-oriented learning, individualization of education, taking into account the abilities, goals, needs and interests of the student has increased” [4, p. 273– 274], “interest in the methodology of national language orientation has revived, textbooks addressed to students of different nationalities continue to be in demand” [7, p. 343], mainly for students from the Asia-Pacific region (Dao Nguen Tguj; K.A. Depon-jan; K. Sakkornoi).

Discussion. It seems that in personality-oriented learning, the consideration of personal characteristics receives a dual interpretation: first, these are personality traits that are already inherent in the student, and therefore affect the choice of teaching methods and means, but, in addition, also those personality traits that have yet to be formed. Therefore, in general, the personal orientation of learning should be based on the concept of the “personality structure of the student”, which is minimally, apparently, composed of such components: mentality, national language, profession. It becomes obvious that the synthesis of professionally and nationally oriented approaches to learning should become an integral part of the personality-oriented teaching methodology of RFL, which, as it seems, is becoming the main direction of methodological research of the modern era, since now the ultimate goal of learning is recognized not just the formation of com- municative competence, but the formality and usefulness of the secondary linguistic personality of the student [3, p. 5], id est his ability to self-actualize in a foreign-speaking, foreign-cultural society, in which mastery of stylistic varieties of the language plays a significant role.

It is important to note that the principles of professionally oriented teaching methods are implemented for the most part in the field of linguodidactic description of the specialty language and the creation of appropriate textbooks aimed at the formation of professional and communicative competence. As for the nationally oriented approach, in addition to constructing a specific linguodidactic model in textbooks of this type, the principles of the methodology of national-language orientation of teaching relate more to the teaching technology itself, where the central setting is reliance on the student s native language.

Therefore, the interpenetration of the two approaches is most appropriate in the field of linguodidactic description of the material. And the possibilities of relying on the student s native language in the process of professional and communicative training are limited by the specifics of the language material itself, presented at different stages of learning. In other words, the deeper the immersion into the sphere of professional discourse goes, the fewer opportunities there are for comparison with the first language as a teaching method. But if a student takes the first steps in scientific activity, here the comparison of the professional dialects of the native and the studied language becomes a more justified didactic technique, since scientific activity in this case has an integrating effect on the linguistic personality as a whole, which hypothetically over time should lead to a balanced command of both native and foreign languages, if both the other will be used in the same amount of social functions.

Conclusions. Thus, perhaps it is today that linguodidactic science has approached the need to synthesize already existing – if we may say so – “orientation methodologies” into an integrated methodological system of personality-oriented learning (taking into account the minimum personality structure of the student described above).

However, with the potential synthesis of these methodologies, some questions still need to be answered.

To what extent and at what certification levels is it advisable to compare the language material?

Is it achievable to distribute foreign students into groups, not only based on the specialty they receive, but also depending on their native language (or intermediary language), if from the point of view of intensifying education, the formation of such groups is more appropriate, but difficult to accomplish due to the uneven number of applicants from different countries?

To what extent can an ethno-ori-ented methodology be used in monolingual but multinational groups?

How to implement the individualization of learning in a multiethnic group with different levels of Russian language proficiency?

These and other questions of the synthesis of “orientation methodologies” in Russian general and professional lin-guodidactics have yet to be answered.