SPEECH PORTRAIT AT THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE LESSON IN THE 8th GRADE OF SECONDARY SCHOOL
Characterization of a person through their speech in the cognitive, social, psychological and cultural terms is one of the important trends in modern linguistics. The scope of research includes descriptive texts about linguists. The attention to speech analysis is associated with the problem of the students’ poor ability to analyze details and to create a speech portrait of a person. The purpose of this study is to analyze the materials of the 8th grade Russian language textbook which acquaint pupils with the concepts of “speech portrait” and “characterization of a person” and form the students’ skills of analysis and characterization. The author of the article compares different points of view of Russian scholars on the concepts of “linguistic personality” and “speech portrait”. The article provides an overview of exercises that form the analytic skills of personal characterization. The author recommends conducting a comprehensive analysis of the personality of a scholar based on the texts given in the textbook. As a model of this activity, there is a description of a final lesson in the series preparing for writing an essay “Speech Portrait of a Scholar”. The general didactic task of the lesson is to teach the students to single out linguistic and non-linguistic (psychological, ethical, moral) means of description of the linguistic personality of the scholar. Elements of discursive and linguistic proper text analysis are used at the lesson.