How to teach cultural awareness alongside language skills in Russian

To teach cultural awareness alongside language skills in Russian, an effective approach is to integrate culture and language learning throughout the curriculum rather than treating them separately. Here are key strategies drawn from recent research and educational practices:

Integrated Content and Language Learning

• Use Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), which balances language skills with cultural content. This method focuses on content, communication, cognition, and culture, ensuring students learn language within meaningful cultural contexts. ¹
• Incorporate authentic materials such as Soviet and Russian cinema excerpts, literature, and cultural texts to deepen students’ understanding of Russian culture, expand vocabulary, and develop linguistic and cultural consciousness. ²

Intercultural Communication and Competence

• Design courses that explicitly address intercultural communication, covering basics of culture and communication, language in culture, and intercultural interactions, including practical aspects like medical communication in a Russian cultural context. ³
• Emphasize developing intercultural competence, which includes skills to navigate cultural differences and fosters awareness, respect, and effective communication with speakers of Russian from diverse backgrounds. ^{4, 5}

Pedagogical Techniques and Materials

• Employ literary texts, short stories, and poems with cultural themes to enhance language skills and cultural knowledge simultaneously, fostering critical thinking and ethical sensitivity. ⁶
• Use bilingual or multilingual teaching methods to provide a bridge between students’ native culture and Russian culture, facilitating better comprehension and cultural adaptation. ^{7, 8}
• Supplement language instruction with cultural insights through history, psychology, ethnography, and other social sciences for a richer cultural context. ⁹

Practical Applications

• Encourage participation in extracurricular activities and projects that expose students to Russian cultural practices and social norms to increase engagement and cultural understanding. ⁴
• Prepare learners for real-life intercultural encounters by discussing cultural expectations, social behaviors, and the subtleties of communication styles in Russian social and professional settings. ¹⁰

In summary, cultural awareness in Russian language teaching is best developed through integrated content approaches, intercultural communication training, cultural materials selection, and practical engagement with cultural contexts and social norms. This holistic method ensures language skills and cultural competence evolve together effectively. ^{1, 2, 3, 9, 4}

References

• CONTENT AND LANGUAGE INTEGRATED LEARNING (CLIL): RESEARCH INTO ITS EFFICACY AND APPLICATION IN EDUCATION ACROSS EUROPE AND BEYOND

• Сinematographic Living Room as a Means of Forming Linguocultural Consciousness in The Context of Online Learning

• Teaching intercultural communication to medical undergraduate students: a pilot study

• Intercultural approach to teaching Russian as a foreign language (on an example of Astrakhan State Medical University)

• Development of creative intercultural and communicative competence of USMU international students at the lessons of Russian as a Foreign Language

• Teachers’ Perspectives on using Literature to Teach English to Engineering Students

• Perspectives of Bilingual Training of Lawyers in Russia: The Demands of Time and Society

• Features of Selecting and Structuring Foreign Language Teaching Content in Terms of International Component

• Regional and ethnocultural specifics for developing intercultural and lingua-cultural competences: the pedagogical strategy

• Sociocultural aspects of international students’ speech behavior: mixed method in language teaching

• A BRIEF ANALYSIS OF TIME-PREPOSITIONS IN THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE

• Projekt badawczo-edukacyjny „Ukrainian Teaching Materials 2022” dla wrocławskich przedszkoli i edukacji wczesnoszkolnej – prezentacja wyników badań sondażowych

• Cultural Competence in an International School Library

• Challenges for Urban Environments in the Implementation of Dual Language Programs

• Exploring how modern sciences impede the development of indigenous knowledge (IK) [Ethno-science and Ethno-mathematics] in the Kavango East region: a case study

• Toward Diversity in Texts: Using Global Literature to Cultivate Critical Perspectives

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• Intercultural Communication and Teaching Russian to International Students at Language Summer Courses

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• Developing Cultural Awareness in Foreign Language Teaching

• Teaching languages in multicultural surroundings : New tendencies

• The Function of Humanities Education in Russian Language at University

• Dialogue between cultures: FL textbook as a foundation for high-quality education

• Culture-Integrated Teaching for the Enhancement of EFL Learner Tolerance