Russian as a foreign language in German Waldorf schools

In the year 2003 the European commission adopted a resolution, according to which every citizen of Europe should be able to communicate in at least two foreign languages besides their native one. This resolution corresponds to the school profile of German Waldorf schools, where two foreign languages are learned from the first grade, moreover, the second foreign language is often Russian. Russian language was introduced into the school profile of Waldorf schools basing on the assumption that through learning one Western and one Eastern language, pupils develop in a holistic way, and, furthermore, this kind of school profile corresponds to the up-to-date investigations in the field of psychology and linguistics. German State schools have also introduced Russian language into their school curriculum but following another aim: they strive to give pupils with the Russian background the possibility to preserve the language of their origin. The study is devoted to the role and place of the Russian as a foreign language in German Waldorf schools. The goal of foreign language learning in this type of schools, can be determined as following: self-knowledge and deeper acquaintance with one's own culture; personality development through the immersion in the world of another culture; development of different capabilities, such as: attentive listening, patience, phantasy, ability to guess; evolvement of the capability to understand other people's way of thinking and their feelings, and also to express one's own thoughts and feelings. This article represents different methods of foreign language teaching (including Russian as a foreign language), characteristic of Waldorf schools. To these methods belong: the method of immersion, the method of reading and writing of the learned material, the method of telling stories, the method of artistic tasks (including the artistic writing). It shows how these methods can be applied in different ways with respect to pupils' age (following the principle of correspondence of the methods to the age and individual specialities of pupils). The whole teaching process, including the contents und the methods of teaching, corresponds to the person's age-appropriate development, and subsequently underpins the natural development of pupils.

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