Dramatic text in Russian language lessons: teaching teenagers to understand and interpret a radio play

Abstract

The relevance of the article lies in the need to teach teenagers to understand and interpret radio plays. A radio drama is considered as one of the objects of the virtual acoustic environment in which school students’ auditory culture is formed. The paper aims to identify the range of skills a pupil needs to adequately understand and interpret a radio play. Another goal is to offer standard assignments aimed at developing these skills. The study employed analysis, generalisation, extrapolation, and modelling. The teaching materials by A. D. Deikina et al (ed. by A. D. Shmelev) were compared with the teaching materials developed by L. M. Rybchenkova et al according to several parameters. These include the number of exercises based on dramatic texts and the source plays of quotations used in the textbooks, as well as the correlation between the quotations and the literature syllabus. The other three parameters are the relation of the used dramatic material to the lesson topic, the volume of the cited dramatic text, and assignment types oriented towards quotations from plays. The analysis of the dramatic material use in various teaching packages has revealed that the specific features of drama are hardly considered. Work is frequently built on a single sentence. The article lists the conditions for achieving the formation of students’ skills necessary to adequately understand and interpret radio dramas. Using the radio play genre addresses the issue of teaching schoolchildren to understand and interpret sounding dramatic text, forms their value-based attitude to radio theatre. Moreover, it enriches their vocabulary and enhances their ability to communicate with classmates. In the light of this evidence, I conclude that using the radio play genre in Russian language lessons develops auditory culture (and, in particular, the culture of ‘slow’ listening). The research indicates that mastering the skill to understand the logic of dialogues lays the groundwork for completing assignment 27 of the Unified State Examination in the Russian language successfully. It holds true with respect to establishing and analysing the semantic connection between illustrative examples when commenting on an issue.