Chinese Philology Students Studying Russian's Cultural Knowledge of Russia (Based on the Results of a Diagnostic Questionnaire)

Abstract: The subject of this study is the cultural knowledge of international philology students about Russia. The paper contains the results of a survey that was conducted for several years (starting in 2014) among students of the Xinjiang State and Xinjiang Pedagogical Universities (PRC, Urumqi), who studied Russian for two years using the textbooks "Russian Language for Universities" (created in China) and came to Russian as a foreign language for a one-year internship (during their third year of studying Russian as a foreign language) at Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University (NGPU), with a B1 level in Russian. The purpose of the work is to present a system of diagnostic tasks that allow students to identify the initial knowledge of philologists about the culture of the country of the language being studied. The purpose of the work is to present a system of diagnostic tasks that allow one to identify the initial knowledge of philology students about the culture of the country of the language being studied and changes in their ideas about the realities of Russian culture at the end of their year of study, to determine the basic cultural and country-specific information acquired during training by carriers of systemically different cultural values. Analysis of pedagogical, methodological, and educational literature on the problems of teaching foreign languages, including Russian as a foreign language, questioning of foreign speakers to determine cultural and regional knowledge about Russia, a method of describing, generalizing, and systematizing the data obtained, a method of thematic classification of cultural studies material presented in textbooks and assignments performed by students. The novelty of the research is determined by the material introduced into scientific and methodological circulation, obtained as a result of a survey and questionnaire of international students of philology, and by allowing the study of the image of Russia that has developed among international students. The study's main conclusions are related to the developed and tested system of diagnostic materials aimed at determining the level of cultural and regional competence of international students. The materials obtained allow international philology students to identify the basic culturally-oriented knowledge about Russia that they have after studying outside the language environment, as well as to track the changes that have occurred in their ideas about Russian culture during their studies in Russia and draw conclusions about the dominant cultural values of Russia in the language consciousness of international students.

RCT, methods of teaching RCT, competencies, socio-cultural competence, country-specific competence, cultural competence, cultural knowledge, training of foreign philology students, ethnomethodics, chinese students