Visual aids in teaching ukrainian as a foreign language

The significantly accelerating pace of life and the increasing amount of information along with the emergence of new cognitive features of modern students have triggered the necessity to select the appropriate ways of presenting educational information. One of the ways to solve the problem is to involve various aids for visualizing knowledge, by providing language and communicative samples during the language training process of foreign students at Ukrainian higher education institutions. This article reveals the essence of the visualization concept, substantiates its use in teaching the Ukrainian language to foreign students, and covers the principles of visual aids selection such as goal orientation, functionality, complexity, and system quantization. The article provides the experimentally tested types of educational materials created with the help of visualization, such as infographics, word clouds, mental maps, memes, and wimmelbuchs. It is proved that the implementation of visual aids in the educational process also has a positive effect on the formation of cognitive interests, and improves the development of such qualities as initiative, independence, and tolerance in intercultural communication. The obtained results show that the selected types of visual aids foster the conscious acquisition of the Ukrainian language, the formation of aspect language skills, and the development of language skills as the basis of communicative competence of foreign students. The authors outline the role of Ukrainian teachers: to create such visual aids which not only complement the language materials but also reflect the socio-cultural context, i.e., form part of the Ukrainian-speaking environment. The use of the proposed set of visual aids for language training of foreign students provides ample opportunities for the formation of phonetic, lexical-grammatical, and communication skills, creates the effect of immersing a foreigner in the linguistic and cultural context visualizing each fragment of communicative interaction in brief form, and at the same time fulfills the function of a visual stimulus for communication.