Extended professionally oriented educational commentary to the Russian fictional text as part of a special course on Russian as a foreign language for architecture students of the preparatory faculty (based on a poem by Natalya Knushevitskaya)

The author draws attention to the fact that at present, in most preparatory faculties of non-architectural Russian universities, targeted professionally oriented training of foreign architecture students is not carried out in RFL lessons. At the same time, even in the first years of university, they do not always adequately understand the essence of their future profession, experience difficulties in learning their specialty and may refuse to study it. It also follows from media reports that the level of professional competence of modern architects is not always high enough, can negatively affect the results of their work and prevent people from different countries from adequately satisfying their needs for convenient, durable, comfortable and beautiful buildings. In order to optimize this situation, it is necessary to introduce linguodidactic materials on professionally oriented topics into the training process of future architects. Such materials should represent a methodically organized system and, ideally, form a special course in Russian as a foreign language in the architectural profile, which can be implemented at the preparatory faculty in the process of group or individual work. In order for this special course to be accessible to students, its materials must be based on the RFL program for this stage of training and be interconnected with the lexical and grammatical content of universal textbooks used in specific student groups: they must rely on their content, correct or supplement it. Based on the analysis of seven popular universal RFL textbooks for preparatory faculties, the author identified specific texts, dialogues and assignments that can be used to create a special architectural course for students of the 1 st certification level of training, and commented on their linguodidactic potential. These materials inform foreigners about Russian cities and their structure, about architectural structures and monuments, provide an opportunity to get acquainted with the interior of Russian residential and museum premises, and discuss typical problems of a modern city: the need to construct new buildings and preserve architectural heritage, taking into account transport and environmental factors when planning construction, etc. However, they do not allow foreigners to get a concrete idea of the specifics of an architect’s work and the difference between his profession and other construction specialties. To eliminate this gap, the author considers it advisable to develop and include new educational tools in the process of teaching RFL, which will become part of a professionally oriented special course and will make it possible to more effectively prepare foreigners for future professional activities, develop their general cultural and creative competence. Such a means, in his opinion, is a Russian authentic fictional text on a special topic, the comprehension of which allows students to participate in mediated communication with an elite Russian speech personality - an artist of words, get acquainted with the original work of Russian verbal art and will create a natural communicative base for the development of their professional speech skills. However, Russian fictional text on a special topic is oriented towards native speakers of the language and is very difficult for foreigners to perceive. To facilitate their acquaintance with it, it should be chosen in a special way: the text should include the studied linguistic material, be small in volume and understandable from the point of view of the students’ worldview. In addition, in order to facilitate its reception, a fictional text on a special topic can be presented to a foreign audience based on a specially developed commentary for it, which the author calls an extended professionally oriented educational one. Such a commentary gives students the opportunity to perceive the fictional text in the original version and understand its ideological and artistic features. He not only explains a specific literary text, taking into account their communicative level, but also expands its content due to thematically related information that is professionally valuable to students. At the same time, the commentary develops professional and secondary communicative competencies of foreigners. Based on these ideas, in this study the author set himself the following goals: to find a modern Russian authentic literary text on a special topic that informs about the professional activities of an architect and is accessible in terms of its volume, lexical, grammatical and semantic content for foreign students of the architectural profile of the first certification level of training; to develop an expanded professionally oriented educational commentary for this text that ensures its adequate perception by foreigners and the maximum possible enrichment of their professional horizons, their assimilation of widely used and professionally valuable architectural and construction vocabulary, information about Russian architects and architecture, the development of their interest in their future professional activities, the ability to comprehend and produce statements about the profession of an architect in Russian and other communicative skills in all types of secondary speech activity; check the effectiveness of the created commentary in experimental training. To achieve these goals, the research process used methods of linguistic and methodological analysis, translation method, method of teaching pedagogical experiment, etc. As a result of the research, an extended professionally oriented educational commentary to the poem “Architect” by the Russian poetess N.A. Knushevitskaya was developed for foreign students of architecture at the preparatory faculty studying Russian at the 1 st certification level. In addition to the text of the poem, the commentary includes three educational and scientific texts created by the author: "Architecture and the Architect", "Architect-Designer as a Construction Worker" and "Urban Planner, Landscape Architect, Restorer and Designer as Architecture Specialists". All texts in the commentary are accompanied by tasks that are related to each other. Vocabulary unfamiliar to students of the 1 st certification level is translated into English, which the majority of students at the preparatory faculty speak. Completing tasks allows foreigners to understand the purpose of architecture, the features of the main architectural specialties, master some widely used architectural and construction terms, train in constructing statements on professional topics and develop communication skills in Russian in all types of speech activity. The developed commentary to N.A. Knushevitskaya's poem was tested by the author with architecture students of the preparatory faculty of Volgograd Technical University and can be applied at preparatory faculties of other Russian universities. It can become a part of a professionally oriented special course for future architects of the 1 st certification level of training. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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