Features of Teaching Paronyms to Greek Students Studying Bulgarian and Russian

Abstract

The article is devoted to the topical issue of perception and compatibility of paronymic pairs among Greek students. In Greece, there are three departments of Slavic studies: the Department of Russian Language and Literature and Slavic Studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of the Athens, the Department of Languages, Literature and Culture of the Black Sea Countries of the Demokritus University of Thrace in Komotini and at the Department of Balkan Studies, Slavic and Oriental Studies of the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki. Students study Russian, Bulgarian and other Slavic languages as foreign languages at these universities. Among the incoming students there are: Greeks (who do not know any Slavic language), who speak one of the Slavic languages (graduated from schools or other educational institutions in their countries) and bilinguals (who arrived or were born in Greece). The purpose of the study programs at these faculties is not only to teach students Russian as a foreign language, but also to give them a complete philological education. Despite the fact that there are quite a few dictionaries of paronyms, there is a lack of educational dictionaries, manuals and electronic resources in the Bulgarian and Russian languages for a foreign audience. Students have difficulties due to misunderstanding, the use of paronyms both in oral and written speech of the Russian and Bulgarian languages at advanced levels. Examples of paronyms with close-sounding semantic correspondences and differences in Russian, Bulgarian and Greek are given. When teaching a foreign language, one should take into account the linguistic and cultural characteristics of not only the native language of students, but also their knowledge of other languages in order to avoid interference. At the end of the article, methodological recommendations are given in the teaching of paronyms.