RosNOU holds an online seminar for Iranian teachers of Russian as a Foreign Language

25 November 2020

Author: Press-sluzhba RosNOU

On 25 November 2020, Russian New University held an online seminar "On Developing Students' Speaking Skills in the Process of Teaching Russian as a Foreign Language" for Iranian teachers and experts in teaching methodology.

The seminar was arranged at the initiative of professor of Allameh Tabataba'i University (Tehran, Iran) Narges Sanaei within the framework of cooperation between the two universities.

One of the leading specialists in the methodology of teaching Russian as a Foreign Language (RFL) at RosNOU's Institute of Technologies for Humanities Rosa Kh. Anopochkina had prepared and delivered the seminar for her Iranian colleagues.

The participants of the seminar looked into the issues of monological and dialogical speech, use of communicative methods of developing speaking skills, and dialogue of cultures as an essential condition of learning a foreign language.

RosNOU's website team talked to Rosa Kh. Anopochkina and found out about the main principles of teaching Russian as a Foreign Language to international students:

In any activity, to get the desired result you need to be motivated. This applies to learning Russian as a foreign language as well. At the same time, from my experience, I know that motivation for learning a language gets stronger in the process of acquiring it. To help students master speaking skills it is vital to create a friendly atmosphere in the group and establish cooperation between the teacher and the students. Such an atmosphere encourages students to express their thoughts freely, without fear of making a mistake.

It goes without saying that to develop students' speaking skills the teacher needs to put forward interesting present-day topics that would spark discussions. Another important component is the introduction to the educational process of technical resources, including presentations, demonstration of films and use of audio content. Your class should never be boring.

And there is one more thing: speaking is a vibrant process where every detail is important. We need to take individual "streamlets" and turn them into a "little river" that will later grow into proper speech*.

* In the Russian language the words "streamlet", "small river" and "speech" have one stem. Moreover, the three words collocate with the verb "flow", hence the metaphor.

Rosa Kh. Anopochkina

Rosa Kh. Anopochkina is a teaching professor. She is the author of the coursebook "Facets of the Text" (Russian "Grani Teksta"). The coursebook is written for international students whose native language is not Russian and whose major is not philology. The goal of the book is to introduce foreign students to different types of speech and develop their skills of working with the text of the academic and professional orientation.