Introducing foreign students to Russian humanitarian culture: problems and opportunities

Relevance. The article focuses on the contradiction between the utilitarian attitudes of foreign students having chosen to study in Russia and value-oriented educational process of Russian higher educational institutions. The effective overcoming of this contradiction will be possible if Russian language teaching of foreign students is organized with their introducing to Russian Humanitarian Culture.

Goal of the article is to present philosophical and culturological analysis of the main aspects of the notion of “Russian Humanitarian Culture” directly addressed to the practice of teaching Russian as a foreign language.

Procedure and methods. The research uses theoretical methods (scientific literature analysis), empirical methods (personal conversations, participant observation, testing, questionnaire survey, pedagogical experiment). As an example, the article presents the procedure and the results of the method of unfinished sentence “When they talk about Russia, I imagine …”, which helped to identify the leading concepts that form associative-imaginative representation of foreign students about Russia.

Scientific novelty and/or theoretical and/or practical significance. The pedagogical meaning of the process of introducing foreign students to Russian Humanitarian Culture and its technological equipment with the help of the system of value-oriented educational situations is revealed.

Results. It is noted that there is certain influence of Western foreign language teaching methodology that is focused on the formation of communicative competence and speaking skills, as well as on the students’ orientation toward the stereotypes of common behavior and popular mass culture events. The necessity of learning a foreign language in connection with the acquisition of moral values presented in the history and Humanitarian Culture of a native speaker is emphasized.

Conclusions. It is necessary to provide axiological educational tools of pedagogically organized interaction between teachers and foreign students in the process of teaching Russian as a foreign language.

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