Cultural knowledge of Russian by Chinese philology students studying Russian (based on the results of a diagnostic questionnaire)

Abstract

The subject of the study is the cultural knowledge of foreign students of philological profile about Russia. The paper contains the results of a study that was conducted for several years (starting in 2014) among students of the Xinjiang State and Xinjiang Pedagogical Universities (PRC, Urumqi), who studied Russian for 2 years using textbooks "Russian language for universities" series "East" (created in China) and came to Russian as a foreign language for a one-year internship (3rd year of studying Russian as a foreign language) at Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University (NGPU), with a B1 level in Russian. The purpose of the work is to present a system of diagnostic tasks that allow students to identify the initial knowledge of philologists about the culture of the country of the language being studied. The purpose of the work is to present a system of diagnostic tasks that allow to identify the initial knowledge of philology students about the culture of the country of the language being studied and changes in their ideas about the realities of Russian culture at the end of the year of study, to determine the basic cultural and country-specific information acquired during training by carriers of systemically different cultural values. Analysis of pedagogical, methodological and educational literature on the problems of teaching foreign languages, including Russian as a foreign language, questioning of foreign speakers in order to determine cultural and regional knowledge about Russia, a method of describing, generalizing and systematizing the data obtained, a method of thematic classification of cultural studies material presented in textbooks and in assignments performed by students. The novelty of the research is determined by the material introduced into scientific and methodological circulation, obtained as a result of a survey and questionnaire of foreign students of philology and allowing to study the image of Russia that has developed among foreign students. The main conclusions of the study are related to the developed and tested system of diagnostic materials aimed at determining the level of cultural and regional competence of foreign students. The materials obtained allow foreign philology students to identify the basic culturally-oriented knowledge about Russia that they have after studying outside the language environment, as well as to track the changes that have occurred in their ideas about Russian culture during their studies in Russia, and draw conclusions about the dominant cultural values of Russia in the language consciousness of foreign students.