The "Language Comes before Characters" Model of Teaching Chinese to Russian Beginners
The Confucius Institutes stationed in Russia report a decline in the overall number of Russian learners of Chinese. As an antidote, the authors suggest a model for an elementary course of Chinese which stresses priority of language and postpones the study of characters. The “Language comes before characters” model is supposed to be suitable in two respects: it reflects the peculiarities of the Chinese Language and, besides, it answers the immediate needs of second language learners. Proceeding from this model, the authors specify practical steps of teaching Chinese to beginners.