Teaching African students Russian at the Center for Open Education in the Republic of Ivory Coast

Abstract

The authors of the article consider the features of teaching Russian as a foreign language (hereinafter referred to as RCT) to Ivorians at the Center for Open Education established on the basis of universities (Université méthodiste de Côte d’Ivoire, Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny, ETIC University) in October 2023 in the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire with the support of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation. The purpose of this study is to describe approaches to teaching Ivorians the Russian language from scratch and the practice of working with African students, which allows to intensify the language learning process, optimize the amount of material studied, choose effective methods and techniques, and offer practical advice to RCT teachers beginning to explore the African continent. The research is based on the principles of competence-based, communicative-activity and ethnically oriented approaches in teaching RCT. To achieve this goal, the following research methods were used: questionnaires, observation, including the method of "unconscious internal observation", statistical methods of processing results, comparison, generalization of practical experience in teaching Russian to foreign students. The implementation of the Russian language teaching system developed by the authors of the article from scratch showed that this process achieves the greatest effectiveness when taking into account the characteristics of the African audience (emotionality, musicality, artistry of students) and including a large number of visual, media and audio materials. According to the authors of the article, the techniques of melodization and rhythmization of linguistic and didactic materials acquired particular importance in the learning process: they contributed to the establishment of trusting relationships between teachers and students, disclosed the requests of Ivorians for the content of education, and allowed taking into account the cultural interests of the audience. The demonstration of respect for Russian and African cultures in the development of the lesson program was carried out taking into account the comparative approach, which allowed students to focus on the peculiarities of Russia compared with Africa's. The use of gaming technologies made it possible for teachers to present material to students in different ways: working in pairs, groups (teams), the rapid change of activities caused by the game, contributed to the establishment of mutual contacts in a large audience (the number of students in the classroom could reach up to 100 people), relieving tension when communicating in a non-native language, unobtrusive introduction of grammatical and lexical material, as well as intensive enrichment of Ivorian students with information about Russian culture.