Phonetics teaching in terms of ethnic oriented education of "Russian as a foreign language" classes

Abstract

The article raises the question of Russian language phonetics teaching in “Russian as a Foreign Language” (referred to as “RFL”) classes for an individual language student group. This study falls into the category of researches dedicated to the analysis of different approaches to ethnic oriented teaching of foreign languages. In particular, typical mistakes of Chinese students made at Russian phonetics lessons are analyzed. They exist not only due to the interference of two unrelated languages (Chinese and Russian), but also due to the features of various students’ Chinese dialects. The main analysis of the current research is the comparative method of unrelated languages analysis, which is set to describe features of phonological systems of Russian and Chinese languages, as well as to uncover typical articulation errors. This article defines the classification of typical pronunciation errors of all Chinese students, which is divided by the article’s authors into two types: interference and dialect errors. Authors come to the conclusion that ethnic oriented approach to the teaching of Russian language phonetics is quite productive, since it creates the possibility to analyze phonetic errors and problematic moments to the students who study foreign language by comparing them to the specific articulative and prosodic features of their native language. The framework of the current article and the given classification of typical errors can be quite helpful to the teachers of “RFL” classes in their pedagogic practices while preparing the classes with Chinese students, and it can attract the attention of expertise who are developing Russian phonetics courses and creating handbooks based on ethnic oriented approach.