Consideration of Russian vocalism peculiarities in teaching foreign students the correct pronunciation

Abstract

The article is devoted to an important aspect of language teaching methods of Russian as a foreign language – the formation of students’ correct articulation skills in the process of pronunciation of Russian vowels. The authors present the classification of Russian vowels and consider the peculiarities of their articulation in comparison with similar sounds in English, French and German languages. According to the authors, such comparisons can serve as methodological guidelines, help students to understand the Russian language sound system much better and overcome the interfering influence of the native language consciously. Knowledge of the most common variations in foreigners’ pronunciation allows the instructor to go by without difficulties while working with any audience. This is especially important in the conditions when the instructor does not speak the student’ native language.

Special attention is paid to the methods of using sound-assistants in the process of vowel pronunciation correction.

General guidelines are also given for the implementation of different phonetic exercises and, in particular, their examples, which raise the efficiency of work while mastering and improving Russian sounds pronunciation. The authors note, that the system of exercises for correct pronunciation skills formation, should be built in such way that the pronunciation exercises are always followed by a series of auditory ones. The implementation of these exercises is preceded by a careful study of the teacher’s comment. Listening to the speech samples must be repeated until you have an accurate auditory image of a word, syntagm, and sentence. We are supposed to get down to pronunciation exercises after successful fulfilment of auditory final tasks.

The article will be useful for the teachers of Russian language as a foreign one, especially phoneticians, who train foreign students the correct pronunciation of Russian or intend to improve their articulation basis as well as students-philologists aimed at introducing the system of Russian vocalism in practice.