Introduction. Research on constructive communication between a teacher and students has a long tradition. For decades, one of the most popular ideas in Russian linguistics is the idea that a teacher is responsible for building learning interaction. Student’s contribution in this regard often remains out of sight. This gap is partially illuminated by works on learning strategies. It would be of special interest to analyze social strategies used by students in learning context. The aim is to characterize and categorize the repertoire of social strategies of foreign students at a Russian language class in Russia. Materials and methods. Data were collected by pedagogical observation: 144 academic hours, including 9 lessons that were audio recorded (18 academic hours). The group of foreign students included 11 members – students of Novosibirsk State Technical University. Audio and diary of supervision were transcribed. Through qualitative cluster-analysis of data the author produced a list of social strategies employed by students. The strategies were then classified; frequency analysis of different social strategies was conducted. Various implementations of these strategies by different students were described. Research results. Activity on the use of social strategies yielded 5.6% of general lesson time. The most frequently employed strategies were: correcting and guiding groupmates in speaking tasks (30 actualizations); indicating problems understanding the material (23 actualizations); searching for help from groupmates to understand communicative questions (17 actualizations); cooperating while doing oral and written assignments and to infer meaning of a new word (17 actualizations). Conclusion. By comparing the results from observation with commonly known classifications of social strategies we determined that some significant strategies of learning interaction have not been addressed in previous research. In particular: using jokes and demonstrating interest towards the languages of groupmates in a multinational group. We also analyzed the strategies: feedback, helping other students, strategies for working in a small group, combining social strategies with affective, cognitive, compensation, and metacognitive strategies. The article also describes destructive strategies: avoiding asking for help, imitating comprehension, and cheating.
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