IMPROVEMENT OF THE METHODS OF TEACHING RUSSIAN TO DEAF SCHOOLCHILDREN USING RUSSIAN SIGN LANGUAGE
In Russia to date, there is no unified system of signs denoting linguistic terms that could be used when teaching the Russian language to deaf and hard - of - hearing pupils. The results of testing deaf and hearing teachers - philologists from schools and linguistic universities showed that some of them use RSL signs which do not exactly correspond to the linguistic terms and could mislead students and cause problems in understanding the subject. For example, there are several signs for such basic terms as “part of speech”, “case”, etc., and none of them is clear enough. Most of the hearing teachers do not know the Russian sign language, so they have no other option but to resort to dactylology and finger - spell the terms. As a result, deaf students are poorly versed in the terminological system and can confuse parts of speech with parts of the words (morphemes) and parts of the sentence.The article presents the content and the results of the experimental work aimed at creation of methodological approaches to the use of the RSL in the process of teaching Russian to deaf students which includes the following: the compilation of the corpus of the basic words and word combinations in RSL frequently used by language teachers while teaching the Russian language to deaf students; the development of methods support materials and principles of designation of the meanings of some linguistic terms with the help of signs and finger - spelling by a group of experts; shooting videos with subtitles for advanced training of teachers and students; holding seminars for RSL teachers and consulting instructors; approbation of the methodology in six Russian special schools for deaf and hard - of - hearing pupils during the academic year, and publishing of the paper version of the dictionary of linguistic terms.