Search

Целью работы является описание лингводидактических возможностей социальных сетей в обучении русскому языку как иностранному. Ключевыми аспектами критического анализа потенциала неспециализированных социальных сетей в обучении иностранному языку стали: 1) особенности коммуникации в социальных сетях с точки зрения лингводидактики; 2) доступный для обучения русскому языку как иностранному функционал социальных сетей; 3) положительные эффекты, связанные с использованием социальной сети в обучении иностранному языку; 4) сопоставление возможностей разных социальных сетей, имиджбордов и мессенджеров в обучении русскому языку как иностранному. В исследовании применялись контент-анализ корпуса русскоязычных исследований лингводидактического использования социальных сетей в обучении РКИ, феноменологический и сравнительно-сопоставительный анализ социальных сетей VK («ВКонтакте»), Facebook*, имиджборда Instagram* и мессенджера Telegram. Материалом исследования стали образцы опыта применения социальных сетей в обучении русскому языку как иностранному, полученные на основе метода случайной выборки в социальных сетях «ВКонтакте» и Telegram. Лингводидактический потенциал социальных сетей в изучении иностранного языка связан с разными видами речевой деятельности (чтением, письмом, слушанием и специфическим речепорождением), реализуемыми посредством интернет-коммуникации. Репрезентируя реальность через текстовые, аудио-, видео- и визуальные материалы, социальные сети предоставляют возможность целенаправленного обучения иностранному языку: их функционал позволяет создавать тематические сообщества, которые могут стать виртуальным пространством для формирования искусственной языковой среды. Там изучающие русский язык как иностранный коммуниканты-инофоны могут 1) создавать, публиковать и воспринимать текст в вербальном, фото-, видео-, аудиоформате на персональной странице или в тематическом сообществе; 2) оставлять комментарии под публикацией, накладывать субтитры или текст скрипта на видео; 3) выражать оценку через символы под публикацией (использовать эмотиконы); 4) осуществлять поиск информации; 5) отправлять и принимать голосовые или текстовые сообщения, 6) использовать чат-бот или виртуального ассистента для коммуникации, сервисы вопросов и ответов; 7) проводить опрос/голосование или участвовать в нем; 8) использовать хештеги или ключевые слова, следить за обновлениями информации по хештегу; 9) заполнять календарь событий и важных дат; 10) формулировать статус (от одного слова до фразы о текущем состоянии автора); 11) создавать беседу (полилог) для конкретных участников и участвовать в ней. Особенность коммуникации в социальных сетях состоит в многообразии видов речевой и когнитивной активности коммуникантов. Обучение в социальных сетях соответствует принципам микрообучения (short-learning); используя дискурсивные особенности самих платформ, мимикрирует под привычный контент, потребление которого занимает у современных пользователей значительное время, и таким образом реализует лингводидактические принципы занимательности и доступности. Оно создает так называемые горизонтальные связи в коммуникации, сочетает в себе синхронный и асинхронный характер и позволяет привлекать языковые и неязыковые средства для изучения русского языка как иностранного, тем самым формируя искусственную языковую среду, необходимую в условиях недостатка естественной коммуникации. * Социальные сети Facebook* и Instagram* являются продуктами Meta Platforms Inc. – организации, деятельность которой в настоящий момент запрещена на территории Российской Федерации. Материалы исследования по данным сайтам собраны до 01.07.2021.

This article provides an overview of the early stages in the development of children’s speech system. Its main features (specific ways of gender identification, simplified inflectional rules, and free derivation) constitute the backbone of Russian grammar, which in turn defines the functioning of the entire mechanism of the Russian language. These are the underlying linguistic patterns and the most general rules. Children learn them at the earliest stage of language acquisition and then modify them using more intricate and complex patterns as they continue to develop their language system. Based on the results obtained, the structure of the Russian grammar framework, an artificial model that summarizes the tendencies inherent in children’s speech at different stages of language acquisition and brings them to a logical conclusion, is outlined. When young children follow the rules of this framework, they sometimes create unique speech products that deviate substantially from the norm. However, they rely on the fixed, albeit simplified, rules and thus master the tricky issues of the grammatical system of the Russian language. Therefore, the framework of Russian grammar, or the core of the Russian language system, should be taken into account in diagnosing the level of speech development, learning Russian as a foreign language, and working with bilingual children.

The current paper discusses possibilities for school students to successfully pass TORFL-I/B1, TORFL-II/B2 and TORFL-III/C1. The relevance of this article is determined by the fact that despite Russian as a foreign (second) language has been taught within the framework of the TORFL system for more than two decades, there is a shortage of methodological material aimed at preparing school students for TORFL. In addition, the issue of choosing the level of testing in accordance with the level of Russian language proficiency and taking into account age specifics is not sufficiently covered in Russian academic literature. The aim of this paper is to define age reference marks for school students who plan to pass TORFL. The materials to review and analyse were the works of Russian and foreign researchers in the field of foreign (second) language proficiency, language development of children and adolescents, assessment of school students communicative competence, language assessment, and correlation of these data with the requirements for completing tasks of the TORFL-I/B1, TORFL-II/B2, TORFL-III/C1 Writing subtests selected as an example. The paper has resulted in providing recommendations on the choice of examination level for senior and junior school students, within the framework of TORFL-I/B1, TORFL-II/B2, TORFL-III/C1, which can also be used in the development of training courses in Russian as a foreign language for schools. The authors concluded that there is need to develop a new methodological area in testing of Russian as a foreign language system capable to provide guidelines and recommendations for preparing school students for examinations, and designing TORFL training courses and teaching materials according to the school students age.

Foreigners coming to the Russian Federation must learn Russian as a foreign language to be able to enter professional programs at Russian higher education institutions. Unfortunately, many foreign students entering medical faculties often lack the required academic level of proficiency in Russian. For this purpose, Russian higher education institutions develop online courses and introduce additional digital resources into the educational process. The need for high-quality educational content has escalated by the COVID-19 pandemic. That is why the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia invites foreign students in biomedical pre-university programs to take an online course in the scientific style of the Russian language from the elementary level to B1. The objective of this study was twofold: first, we attempted to examine how the students’ attitude towards Russian as a foreign language, motivational sphere, and performance change as they take the course; next, we examined the level of satisfaction of foreigners with such courses in two years - in 2018, during the pre-pandemic period, and in 2021, when the COVID-19 pandemic had a clear impact on the extensive use of distance learning. For this purpose, we used modified questionnaires by \textcite{orlov_kolmogorov_2014}, and created a questionnaire all foreign students were asked to answer upon completing the courses. The study showed that foreign students of the biomedical profile who study at preparatory faculties on the proposed courses in 2018 and 2021 exhibited significant differences in the motivational sphere, the nature of their attitude towards the applied online courses. These findings allow us to conclude that the applied online courses are a valid supplemental form of training that can be used during any situation that causes in-person instruction to be impractical and can be used as material for independent work within the traditional classroom teaching system.

Copyright of Texto Livre / Texto Livre: Linguagem e Tecnologia is the property of Revista Texto Livre: Linguagem e Tecnologia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article covers the simulation of a pedagogical strategy for forming skills to produce a monologic discourse based on reference prediction units. The purpose of the research was to identify optimal ways to form cognitive mechanisms for a monologic Russianlanguage discourse expansion with a rigid structure, primarily academic and academic-vocational, discourse in international students. Besides, it enables students to successfully predict and expand descriptive texts/discourses on various topics after one or two months. As a prospect for studying cataphoras in linguodidactics, let us note the following differentiation of student categories as an important point: extroverted students/introverted students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foreign students who are trained in a country other than their own, face psychophysiological, educational, linguistic, didactic, sociocultural and other difficulties. To solve these problems, interactive forms of teaching are offered, in particular, the use of innovative technology, which is project-oriented student teaching. The study proposes a number of projects that foreign students could create in the first year of learning the russian language. The research projects proposed in the article have been tested at the Moscow Polytechnic University and at the Volgograd State Technical University. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the Slavic studies in Great Britain . Topics include the abundance of surveys in the area of Slavonic and East European Studies, the reasons for the abundance such as due to the strategic significance of the field, commissioning of such reports by Higher Education authorities and chronic failure of Slavic studies to thrive without substantial state investment, and impact of withdrawal of teaching Russian language on the offerings in Slavic literary and cultural studies.

Narrative competence is an essential part of language proficiency. Research of narrative competence has both a theoretical and empirical value. Our study aims to assess narrative competence of adult L2 Russian learners and to investigate the relationship between their narrative competence and their language proficiency. For assessment, we used the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives adapted for the Russian language. We also designed a scale for assessing microstructure in Russian narratives. The study uses both qualitative and quantitative analysis. The results show that macrostructural narrative subcompetence of L2 Russian learners does not depend on their language proficiency (except for an ability to produce structurally shorter episodes at higher level) and microstructural narrative subcompetence of L2 Russian learners depends on their language proficiency only in some ways. Our study contributes to the theory of narrative competence in L2 acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Countries are aware that an elective second foreign language is necessary for them to communicate in economic, social and cultural areas rather than one another, since a single foreign language is not sufficient. The second foreign language gets the starting point from the first foreign language. Students who are learning a second foreign language receive support from the first foreign language, such as, the strategies they apply to the second foreign language. This study was aimed to contribute to the field of method and teaching of Russian, by researching the learning strategies of the NEU SOTHM students studying Russian as a second foreign language. Questions regarding which strategies they apply whilst learning Russian and if they make any connection to English, their first foreign language, whilst learning were used as research material. Data obtained by questionnaire were evaluated in the SPSS 15.0 package program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to examine the personal and professional life of Henryk Grzymała Lubański. A Polish Garibaldian who was completely erased from public memory after his death, Lubański was extremely active in promoting the Russian and Polish languages and Russian and Polish literature among Italians. This article, which is based on a variety of unpublished archival sources, is the first to be entirely dedicated to this subject. This work contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the history of Slavic studies and Russian studies in Italy in the second half of the 19th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this exploratory study is to work out and describe the labour migrant’s linguodidactic profile, to verify its didactic capacity of an instrument of pedagogic measurement of social, cognitive, ethnocultural, educational and other significant characteristics of migrants affecting the efficiency of the Russian language training courses. The interdisciplinary methodology of the research integrates principles and approaches of methods for teaching Russian as a foreign language, interdidactics, migration sociolology, culturology, anthropology and cognitive science. The Russian language training courses have a strong potential for linguocultural adaptation and integration of labour migrants because the language functions as a depository and translator of the hosting nation’s moral norms and values. The effectiveness of the Russian language training course depends upon the strict consideration of all significant characteristics of its addressees, i.e. labour migrants. These characteristics were identified and then integrated into the linguodidactic profile which was taken as a basis for the language training course. The didactic capacity of the linguodidactic profile was proved on the example of language teaching and testing of migrants from the Republic of Tajikistan, since foreigners from this country form the majority (47%) of labour immigration flows to the Russian Federation. The role and capacity of the linguodidactic profile in teaching Russian as a foreign language have been verified experimentally. The analyses and comparisons of the final examination results proved the efficiency of the training course worked out with consideration for the labour migrant’s typical linguodidactic profile and, consequently, its high didactic capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the problem of using audiovisual visibility in the lessons of Russian as a foreign language in a military engineering university. The authors analyzed domestic and foreign theoretical sources on this issue. The principles of selection of audio-/video materials, tasks and methods of working with them are described, in accordance with communicative and professional competence. The main requirements for video materials are listed, under which the learning process will be successful. The article suggests assignments to a video film when working with foreign military personnel, and justifies the purpose of its use. In conclusion, the advantages of attracting audiovisual visibilities is mentioned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the current state of contemporary virtual space from the position of the presence of opportunities to offer to use when learning Russian as a foreign language by foreign children and children of migrants, whose age ranges are from three to 14 years, as well as the assistive tools in teaching this age group the Russian language are given. The rapidly growing volume of tools and applications brings the problem of the availability of technologies to the fore.1 That is why virtual educational environment is already an integral element of teaching children and adults of all ages in the modern world. In terms of the ubiquitous information society the education sector is forced to adapt to the rapidly changing demands of the society, and therefore an inclusion of information and communication technologies and other supportive structures, such as the Internet, various educational platforms like Moodle, into the learning process at all stages is mandatory to achieve successful result of preschool, school and other training for children. In this study, carried out in the framework of the project entitled "Competition courses open education in Russian language", implemented under the Federal target program "Russian language 20162020", we have studied the Internet in search of online resources that help children of different age groups in the study of Russian as a foreign language. An approximately equal ratio of the resources for the childrennative speakers of the Russian language and resources, suggesting studying Russian as a foreign language was identified. Also the analysis of the identified resources and the classification according to various criteria with an aim of their classification was carried out. As a result of this research, we came to the conclusion that in modern virtual space there are resources that can be used as auxiliary facilities for studying Russian as a foreign language by children, speakers of different languages. However, we believe that the role of the teacher (tutor, mentor) remains extremely important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Art-Sanat Journal / Art-Sanat is the property of Art-Sanat and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Author-supplied Abstracts.)

Over the past decade, second language (L2) humor has attracted scholarly attention as both a means and a goal of L2 development. Much of this research, however, has focused on oral communication, whereas virtually no studies address humor as an aspect of reading comprehension. This exploratory study combines these two areas of inquiry, examining how L2 learners of Russian negotiate textual humor. In particular, the study addresses the role of textual properties (genre and humorousness), and the effects of proficiency on learners' ability to apprehend and appreciate textual humor. The findings suggest that learner comprehension is dynamic and often partial (cf. Bell, ), depending on familiarity with genre conventions and linguistic devices signaling humorous intent. The study also found that different stages of humor comprehension required discrete sets of knowledge: Detection, for example, relies on L2 linguistic knowledge, whereas understanding hinges largely on native cultural beliefs. Comparison of both groups suggested that the differences between learners and native speakers were both quantitative and qualitative. The role of proficiency was more complex than expected and primarily evidenced in the accuracy (rather than frequency) of humor recognition independent of text properties. The article concludes with pedagogical suggestions and outlines future research areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article lies in the consideration of integration examination on Russian as a foreign language, history of Russia and basics of the Russian legal system for different categories of migrants in Russia. In the article the legal and methodical aspects of the complex examination introduction and the principles of the examination are analysed. The dialectical method, synthesis and theoretical approaches are used for the elaboration of the legal basis, testing and preparatory materials for introduction of the complex examination. The paper proves that the implementation of such examination will play the role of integration factor prescribed to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This experiment investigated whether input variability would affect initial learning of noun gender subcategories in an unfamiliar, natural language (Russian), as it is known to assist learning of other grammatical forms. Method: Forty adults (20 men, 20 women) were familiarized with examples of masculine and feminine Russian words. Half of the participants were familiarized with 32 different root words in a high-variability condition. The other half were familiarized with 16 different root words, each repeated twice for a total of 32 presentations in a high-repetition condition. Participants were tested on untrained members of the category to assess generalization. Familiarization and testing was completed 2 additional times. Results: Only participants in the high-variability group showed evidence of learning after an initial period of familiarization. Participants in the high-repetition group were able to learn after additional input. Both groups benefited when words included 2 cues to gender compared to a single cue. Conclusions: The results demonstrate that the degree of input variability can influence learners' ability to generalize a grammatical subcategory (noun gender) from a natural language. In addition, the presence of multiple cues to linguistic subcategory facilitated learning independent of variability condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article reports on two studies which investigated how and to what extent students' intrinsic motivation and task engagement were affected by manipulating autonomy, in the form of task choice. A total of 120 learners of L2 Russian at a German university worked in pairs to complete a task that focused on making a written presentation about a famous contemporary person from Russia. Two types of choice were manipulated: choice on the content of the task and procedural choice. Four different outcomes of students' performances were examined: (a) responses to a questionnaire tapping their subjective experiences regarding task motivation, (b) time-on-task in minutes, (c) total word length of their written presentations, and (d) quality of task performance. Results suggest that different combinations of choice produce different effects on students' behavior. Contrary to the assumptions of self-determination theory (Deci and Ryan, 1985), the conditions with less choice proved to be more beneficial for students' task engagement and task motivation. The findings offer a complex picture regarding the application of self-determination theory in understanding learner motivation during task-based language teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies have explored images and representations about Russia. For the most part these studies were done in Western socio-cultural and educational contexts. The present article focuses on images about Russia held by learners of Russian in a big public university in Malaysia. Besides exploring the content of the students' stereotypical representations about Russia this study distinguishes consensual stereotypes and assesses their salience, which has not been done previously. The findings reveal that the students' representations aligned with popular images about Russia and that the top salient stereotypes about Russia were a 'big country' and a 'cold country'. The article offers some suggestions about how knowledge of the students' stereotypes about the target language country could be employed to teach the cultural component of the language program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the article is to provide the answer to the question concerning the Russian teaching staff and its nationality in Lublin Seconday School. The author of the article discusses the stages of the teaching carteer of Russian teachers. According to the law established in 1833, after the fall of November uprising, the school authorities introduced the Russian language to the Polish school. In 1832-1864 Russian was taught by 22 teachers in Lublin Secondary School. Among them there were three Russian head-masters. Russian was also taught by teachers of other nationalities including Polish, Ukrainian, Lithuanian and Georgian. The first Russian, who taught his native language in Lublin in 1834-1836 was professor Jan Aleksandrowski. He had taught in Krzemieniec before. He started teaching there in 1807 and was considered to be an exceptionally amiable and competent teacher by schoolboys who did not pay attention to russification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is a response to a 2012 article in the periodical by Bill VanPatten, Erin Collopy, and Anthony Qualin titled "Just How Important is Explanation?" Topics discussed include the article's dealing with the question of what the impact is of explicit grammatical explanation on adult Russian language learners' success in processing subject-object inversion.

In this study, the authors evaluated the strengths and limitations of a self-assessment based on ACTFL Can-Do statements (ACTFL, ) as a tool for measuring linguistic gains over an internship abroad in Russia. They assessed its reliability, determined how its items mapped with the ACTFL scale, and measured the degree to which students' self-evaluations matched oral proficiency interview (OPI) test results (i.e., predictive validity). Data revealed a high level of reliability. Furthermore, self-assessment items ascended in the order of difficulty expected (i.e., Superior items were the most difficult, followed by Advanced), but differences between the means for items representing the ACTFL levels were not statistically significant. Finally, while students demonstrated significant gains from pre- to posttests on both the OPI and the self-assessment, correlations between these measures were only moderate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the second language (L2) acquisition of two expressions of the semantic feature [definite] in Russian, a language without articles, by English and Korean native speakers. Within the Feature Reassembly approach (Lardiere, 2009), Slabakova (2009) has argued that reassembling features that are represented overtly in the first language (L1) and mapping them onto those that are encoded indirectly, or covertly, in the L2 will present a greater difficulty than reassembling features in the opposite learning direction. An idealized scale of predictions of difficulty is proposed based on the overt or covert character of the feature encoding and the ease/difficulty of noticing the feature expression. A total of 158 participants (56 native Russian, 49 English learners and 53 Korean learners of Russian) evaluated the acceptability of test sentences in context. Findings demonstrate that acquiring the expression of a feature that is encoded contextually in the L2 is challenging for learners, while an overt expression of a feature presents less difficulty. On the basis of the learners’ developmental patterns observed in the study, we argue that overt and covert expression of semantic features, feature reassembly, and indirect encoding appear to be significant factors in L2 grammatical feature acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As more formal academic coursework moves online, especially to synchronous, multimodal sessions, the issue of directing and ensuring learner attention becomes particularly problematic. Polyfocalilty – individual and group attention distributed between and among information and communication sources and their varying modalities – becomes particularly challenging for online language education. This study set out to determine what instructional strategies online instructors are employing during their live conferencing sessions to meet such challenges. Seven online Russian language educators were interviewed concerning their practices. These instructors report instructional strategies that are addressed in the context of new media and new learning practice. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article is about the type of language that is offered to learners in textbooks, using the example of Russian. Many modern textbooks of Russian as a foreign language aim at efficient development of oral communication skills. However, some expressions used in the textbooks are not typical for everyday language. We claim that textbooks' content should be reassessed based on actual language use, following theoretical and methodological models of cognitive and corpus linguistics. We extracted language patterns from three textbooks, and compared them with alternative patterns that carry similar meaning by (1) calculating the frequency of occurrence of each pattern in a corpus of spoken language, and (2) using Russian native speakers' intuitions about what is more common. The results demonstrated that for 39 to 53 percent of all the recurrent patterns in the textbooks better alternatives could be found. We further investigated the typical shortcomings of the extracted patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the Russian government Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States, Compatriots Living Abroad, and International Humanitarian Cooperation (Rossotrudnichestvo) as part of Russia's foreign ministry. It is said that the agency engages in cultural diplomacy and in protecting the interests of the Russian diaspora. Other topics include the opening of cultural centers around the world, Rossotrudnichestvo's role in the integration of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and the promotion of the Russian language abroad.

This project investigates whether learners of Russian perceive the sociocultural weight of the two personal pronouns for 'you,' ty (informal/intimate) and vy (formal/polite) when they listen to native speech. Research on address pronoun use shows it to be an important sociocultural variable and, while there is some general consistency in use, there is also a great deal of manipulation of the pronouns to create effect or demonstrate a change in relational dynamic. Students at Northeast College and Midwest University participated in a listening task involving video clips from Russian and Soviet films. Results indicate that perception of the pronouns in a listening task is not significantly different across proficiency levels. That is, beginning and advanced learners demonstrate similar ability with the understanding of the feature. Furthermore, female learners outperformed male learners on the listening task to a statistically significant degree within each program. These results add to the body of knowledge in second language acquisition and, more specifically, to our knowledge of how pragmatic features of a language are understood by learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study that addresses the question of explicit information and processing instruction in the case of second-year learners of Russian and the processing of nominative and accusative case marking. The study found that explicit information does not play a significant role in processing instruction. It was determined that learners who received information focused on nominative and accusative case in Russian and the First-noun Principle did not have an advantage over those who did not receive explicit information.

The article discusses how English as a first language readers use grammatical knowledge to extract meaning when reading Russian informational texts. The author describes a study which revealed the various ways readers use and ignore grammar when reading texts for meaning. It is suggested that reading pedagogy needs to find ways of making readers more aware and attentive to the grammatical structure of the Russian language.

This study suggests that Intermediate High and Advanced speakers produce aspectually valid constructions in Oral Proficiency Interviews (OPIs) in large part because they are doing more than assigning aspect to lexical categories (Lexical aspect hypothesis), but because they are assigning lexicalized meaning to discrete verbs, for example govorit' (imperfective)-'to talk,' but skazat' (perfective)-'to say.' Analysis of the data from 55 OPIs conducted with second language (L2) Russian speakers ranging from Intermediate High to Superior confirms three hypotheses: (a) the proportion of aspectual utterances that owe their correctness to lexicalization decreases as proficiency increases; (b) aspectual competence as demonstrated by the greater number of aspectually non-lexicalized verbs in the speech of L2 Russian speakers rises with proficiency level; (c) a decrease in the proportion of lexicalized verbs in an examinee's speech correlates positively with an increase in the variety of verbs used. Other findings include a relative paucity of unprefixed verbs of motion in the corpus and a high ratio of lexicalized forms of skazat''to say,' and their distribution did not correlate with proficiency levels in either direction. The high ratio of aspectually lexicalized items in the corpus and the aspectual inaccuracies to which they lead have implications for teaching students who are approaching Intermediate High and Advanced levels of proficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The national system of language level testing checks the degree of communicative competence of foreign students according to the levels of the acquisition of Russian as a foreign language. Corresponding documents (such as Standards, Programmes, Lexical Minimums, Typical Tests) list requirements for the content of every level, give the required minimum of intentions, situations and topics for speaking. The description of the main blocks of intentions according to the levels of acquisition of Russian as a foreign language gives an opportunity to present the volume of required intentions and their continuity from level to level. Lingo-methodological analysis of some intentions and an algorithm of their description according to the basic identification of a lexico-semantic group give the possibility to see a real content of a lexico-semantic group, pick out the main and optional verbs, which are necessary for every level and which have to be controlled in the system of language level testing giving a possibility for a tester to improve the testing strategy considerably, and, finally, using it as a guideline for an unbiased estimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem of preparedness of students of the Russian language for intercultural communication (ICC) is analyzed in the article. The concept "preparedness for ICC" is described as an integrative structure where two levels can be distinguished. The first level (primary preparedness for ICC) is determined by psychological state of a student, by his/her personal and intellectual characteristics. The second level (final preparedness for ICC) is understood as the development of intercultural competence. Affective, cognitive and strategic components are considered as the main components of intercultural competence. The affective aspect presupposes that the speaker possesses such qualities as tolerance, and emphatic ability. The base of cognitive component consists of good knowledge of both the native and foreign cultures being in contact, and specificity of the communicative behaviour. The strategic aspect of intercultural competence is connected with becoming proficient in compensatory strategies of communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A letter to the editor is presented in response to the article "Just How Important Is Explanation: A Response" by Oscar Swan in the previous issue, with response from the author.