PHONETIC EXERCISES FOR TEACHING LISTENING COMPREHENSION OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEXT (IN THE ASPECT OF RUSSIAN AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
The article suggests systematic linguistic and methodical description of phonetic exercises and tasks that may be used in teaching listening comprehension of a foreign language text. Analysis of textbooks on listening that are used in teaching Russian as a foreign language has shown that they lack exercises serving to form and develop the skills of identifying phonetic features of the audio text. Increased attention to functions of audio resources in teaching Russian to foreign students is due to the conscious need to form students’ pragmatic competence at all levels of the studied language. We prove the need to introduce exercises that aim at formation and advancement of intonation skills that play important role in understanding foreign language audio text. Several exercise types have been developed by the authors and featured in some textbooks for foreigners who learn Russian language (“Listen!”, “Listening” parts in the MOOC on Russian as a foreign language at “Coursera”). The exercise “chains” is of special value because it allows to achieve several educational goals: increase the capacity of students’ operative memory, develop phonemic ear, form the prediction skills and abilities to distinguish elements of the audio flow. Extending the Gasparov’s theory of linguistic existence, and the communicative fragments described there, onto the exercise “chains”, it’s possible to derive a new unit of teaching listening - the audeme. We justify the need to use phonetic exercises to solve phonetic problems and hence achieve effective perception and comprehension of the audio text, as well as to revise and control the phonetic skills. We have tried to match phonetic exercises with the levels of Russian as a foreign language. The perspectives to further develop the methods of teaching Russian intonation to foreigners are outlined.