Teaching Russian through the prism of concept theory: culture, mentality and aspects of language

Conceptual approach opens new perspectives in teaching foreign languages - the Russian one as a foreign language among others. These perspectives are connected with deep mental plunge of students into the conceptosphere of the language and culture. The plunge (realized on lexical, grammar and phonetical levels on the language) results in enlarging students' views of connection between language and mentality, language and world-perception, language and national culture, as well as in general improvement of their motivation against the background of positive involvement into multidimensional understanding of language structure elements. The paper suggests using the four-stage methodology of teaching lexis that provide broadening students' notion of a word, its lexical context, its symbolic and value connotations and its connections with other elements of language and culture. The paper tackles upon the problem of applying conceptual approach to teaching grammar material, and suggests an exemplary methodology of teaching different grammar structures of the Russian language, using the material of two experiments with a group of American high school seniors, studying Russian at an initial stage. The methodology combines elements of conscious-comparative method and technology of critical thinking, and aims at emotional and intellectual involvement of students into the process of learning new grammar structure of a foreign language. The paper argues that introducing the notion of 'phonetic concept', to denote a structured element of people's mentality, basically expressed at the phonetic level of a language, can be effectively used in theory and practice of teaching foreign languages. On the example of the Russian language, the authors make an assumption that there is a systematic connection between a long and light breath, absence of any possible indicator of aspiration, a relaxed tip of the tongue, so characteristic of Russian pronunciation, on the one hand, and a hearty-meditative worldview, peculiar for Russian culture, on the other.

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