Linguistic and cultural potential of the philosophical text in the practice of teaching Russian as a foreign language

The article is devoted to the study of written texts in teaching Russian as a foreign language: students actualize cognitive mechanisms that allow them to compare culturally specific information about the studied language with general cultural knowledge. As the main linguodidactic unit, the text is considered in terms of its capabilities to form linguistic and cultural competence. Mastering this competence involves various types of work with the text, deepening knowledge about the specifics of genre forms, the originality of the stylistic resource, about the linguistic mechanisms of the formation of an individual author’s picture of the world and the linguistic picture of the world behind it. The study is based on the overlap between the idea of the five phases (Wuxing) in Chinese culture and the metaphors of fire and water in Natalia Ilyina’s text «The Expulsion of the Normans». The strategy of language learning in the context of culture allows us to offer Chinese students the passages from this text containing metaphors of fire and water. The questions for studying the text excerpt in the lessons of Russian as a foreign language are developed and described. Pre-textual tasks and questions after readying the text are offered to discuss the values of Russian culture: the metaphors of fire and water in Natalia Ilyina’s text are compared with the ideas about the phases (elements) of fire and water in traditional Chinese culture. Working with the text of Natalya Ilyina in the Russian as a foreign language class will allow speakers of other cultures to get acquainted with the Russian spiritual tradition in its mythopoetic incarnation and expand their knowledge of textual material (the language and style of a philosophical work).

Text-oriented approach to teaching Russian as a foreign language, linguocultural competence, philosophical text, metaphor