Peculiarities of Teaching Russian Language for Special Purposes

O. A. POPOVA
Perm Military Institute of the Forces of the National Guard of the Russian Federation
E. A. PEPELIAEVA
Perm State Pharmaceutical Academy

Abstract: The article describes the features of professionally-oriented teaching of Russian as a foreign language, in particular, describes such learning vectors as interdisciplinary coordination, introduction of the vocabulary and terminology at the initial stage of language learning, acquaintance with the socio-cultural and ethno-cultural features of the country of the studied language.

Key words and phrases: professionally-oriented teaching of a foreign language, language for special purposes, interdisciplinary coordination.

Introduction. In modern Russian universities there is a large number of foreign students obtaining higher professional education. Due to the fact that teaching in the Russian Federation is conducted in Russian, the foreigners studying in Russia need, first and foremost, the acquisition of language skills that will later enable them to successfully accumulate the academic disciplines in accordance with the chosen specialty.

There are different approaches to the language training of foreign students in modern Russian pedagogical science. As a rule they are all aimed at achieving the main goal that is teaching Russian to foreign students so that they could acquire the knowledge and skills necessary for the future profession. The system of Russian higher education provides preparatory departments for foreign citizens in the universities. The main task of these departments is preparing non-Russian-speaking students from foreign countries for further study in Russian higher educational institutions. During the period of study at the preparatory department foreign students acquire basic skills in Russian, as well as get acquainted with the Russian education system and undergo primary adaptation to living conditions. The teaching process at the preparatory department is built according to the profile chosen by the students: humanitarian, economic, engineering, medical, biological, etc., which, of course, correlates with the main goal of teaching foreign citizens that is successfully mastering the future profession.

Discussion. The teaching of the Russian language in the Russian higher education system is professionally oriented, which is expressed in the development of educational and methodological textbooks that take into account the professional orientation of students: “The Russian Language and the Culture of Speech for Medical Institutions” [6], “The Russian Language and Culture of Speech for technical universities” [2] etc.

Teaching foreign students the Russian language for special purposes includes various aspects of mastering the scientific vocabulary of the chosen profession, the awareness of the close connection between the study of the Russian language and special disciplines, acquaintance with national culture features etc.

Mastering of scientific vocabulary on the chosen profile is one of the important tasks of professional-oriented language teaching. The student must not only acquire the knowledge of the basic lexical and grammatical norms but must also have an idea of the functional and stylistic differentiation of the Russian language and about the differences between colloquial and scientific styles of speech. The most important and essential is the teaching of general scientific vocabulary and terminology as the core of the scientific style of speech and a determining component of professional language competence. Knowledge and appropriate use of terminology will allow the student to fully accumulate the special disciplines and successfully approve themselves in their future profession.

Teaching the terminology is a multifaceted process and can affect not only the semantic, but also the orthoepical and grammatical features of the use of restricted professional vocabulary. For example, students of medical specialties should be taught the correct pronunciation of various medical terms. To make it easier for foreign students to remember the norms of accentuation it is rational to consider the etymology of words. For example stressing the last syllable in such terms as коклюш ‘whooping cough’, диспансер ‘dispensary’, мигрень ‘migraine’, стоматит ‘stomatitis’, полиартрит ‘polyarthritis’ etc., it is appropriate to explain that by the French origin of the words.

In addition, foreign students need to have an idea that one of the meanings of a polysemantic word can be used as a term and that the meanings of the same word in different branches of scientific knowledge may not coincide. For example, the word связка ‘bunch’ has five meanings in Russian according to the dictionary by S.I. Ozhegov. From these five meanings two refer to the scientific sphere: 1) in linguistics ‘functional word connecting the subject with the predicate’ [5, p. 705]; 2) in biology and medicine ‘connective tissue fibrous formation in the form of a bundle, strand or plate that connects bones (syndesmosis) or is part of the holding (suspending) apparatus of internal organs; also duplications and sheets of serous membranes that connect the organs to the walls of the body cavities or to each other, as well as obliterated embryonic vessels and ducts’ [7]. In order for the learners to use the terminology and understand the meaning of the words they encounter in oral or written speech correctly, all the meanings of a polysemantic word must be sorted in their mind, from which they can choose what is necessary for them in a particular communicative situation.

When teaching Russian language for special purposes to the foreign students it is also important to follow the principle of interdisciplinary coordination, which implies the interconnection and interdependence of the subjects studied by different disciplines. According to this principle teachers of the Russian language and various subjects in the chosen profile should work closely together to improve the educational process and make it as effective as possible. With interdisciplinary coordination many scientific problems, facts, hypotheses and theories are simultaneously considered in the framework of different disciplines, which contributes to a more complete and multifaceted understanding of them and the formation of deep connections between phenomena of reality in the minds of students. Coordination between disciplines also provides students with the opportunity to repeat terminology and professional vocabulary repeatedly, which facilitates its memorization and mastering. Teachers need to communicate with each other, agree on the methodology for introducing material, identify the core of the most important words and phrases for memorizing, perhaps even with the compilation of a glossary that will be used in the teaching of different disciplines [3].

It is important for the teacher of Russian to remember that for mastering the lexical units (both general and scientific) it is necessary not only to know it theoretically, but also to use it in practice. Taking into account the fact that professional and business communication involves both oral and written communication, and can be a monologue or a dialogue (polylogue), attention in the training process should be paid to the formation of skills and abilities in various types of speech activity. In this connection it is advisable to use the methods of roleplay modeling in the Russian language classes, which makes it possible to create communicative situations typical for the future professional activity of students. For example for medical and biological students the situation of admission of a patient in a hospital can be modeled. In such a communicative situation the students will be able to practice the skills of oral conversation with the patient (which is especially important, since the profession of the doctor is linguoactive) and also apply the previously obtained spelling and grammatical knowledge in writing out certificates, conclusions and other papers.

For the formation of intercultural communicative competence in the Russian language classes it will be appropriate to use as educational material texts that familiarize foreign students with the history and culture of Russia. Following the principle of interdisciplinary coordination and the need for students to develop a language-based scientific style of speech it is desirable to select texts that meet all the criteria. So, for example, a teacher of Russian working with students of biomedical prifiles may choose a text on the history of medicine in Russia, containing information about the biography and activities of famous Russian doctors (for example, about Nikolai Ivanovich Pirogov). Working with this text, analyzing it, implementing various practical tasks and exercises on the text will allow students to repeat medical terminology, to write and pronounce it correctly, to get information on the history of Russian culture and medicine, to learn about the life of outstanding Russian scientists.

The training of foreign students must necessarily include the cultural component and therefore it is important to pay attention to the national and cultural peculiarities of Russia in the Russian language classes. Foreign students need to get acquainted with Russian traditions, rules and norms of communication and behavior. An obligatory component of professionally-oriented language teaching is the study of culture oriented linguistics which studies verbal behavior and the norms of speech etiquette of different countries revealing their features and the differences between them. It is extremely important for a specialist of any profile to have an intercultural communicative competence that includes general cultural, socio-, ethno- and linguocultural aspects, that is, it presupposes the availability of knowledge from the field of culture and the history of the country of the studied language, the notion of its ethical and etiquette norms. So for example Moroccan students following their etiquette norms do not call a teacher by name and patronymic, but they address him or her as professeur (fr.). Many Russian teachers would perceive it as an unacceptable and even disrespectful form, the same as if teachers addressed students not by name but by the word student.

It is important in this process of teaching to pay attention not only to the verbal communication side, but also to the non-verbal communication, since non-verbal communication is as important as the verbal and perhaps even more (in the opinion of psychologists, 55-65% of information is perceived precisely through non-verbalism in the process of communication). It is important to consider which culture the students belong to: “we-culture” (with collectivist orientation) or “I-culture” (with a more oriented perception of a person as an individual, and not as part of a collective performing a certain social function) [4]. For “we-cultures” (to which for example the Arab culture refers) non-verbal communication plays an immeasurably greater role, communication between people occurs with greater affinity to each other than among representatives of “I-cultures”, for whom it is comfortable to have distance corresponding to the length of the two hands stretched for the handshake during their conversation [1], while a closer distance, and even touching your partner in conversation can be considered as a manifestation of disrespect or familiarity.

Conclusion. Thus, the process of teaching the Russian language for special purposes to foreign students is multifold and multifaceted. It is important for the teacher to take into account a number of factors (linguistic, sociocultural, ethnocultural, etc.), so that the teaching of the Russian language even at the initial stage would serve to form the competencies necessary for successful and effective communication in the sphere of professional activity.

Bibliography

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