Issues in Teaching Russian to Foreign Students Discussed in Voronezh

On 28–30 January 2016, the Department of Philology at the Voronezh State University hosted the Fourth International Scientific Conference “Issues in Teaching Philology to Foreign Students” with support from the Russkiy Mir Foundation.

The conference brought together over 100 people from 17 countries—Algeria, Angola, Belarus, China, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Hungary, Russia, Senegal, Thailand, Transnistria, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, the United States, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.

The plenary session included reports on the following topics: “Teaching Modern Russian Literature to Hungarian Audiences” (University of Debrecen, Hungary), “Russian Language in Senegal” (Cheikh Anta Diop University, Senegal), “Modern Russian Literature: Favorite Books of Foreign Students” (Voronezh State University, Russia), “Semantic and Functional Contrastive Grammar in Teaching Russian as a Foreign Language” (Voronezh State University, Russia) and “Patronymic as an Ethnolinguistic Category in the History of Russian Language” (Voronezh State University, Russia).

Foreign students from Voronezh universities performed onstage on the first day of the conference, presenting their national customs, music, dance and songs to the public.

The second day of the conference involved a number of sessions:

• Methodology and Methods of Teaching Foreign Students
• Russian Language System: Contemporary Issues in Studying Language among Foreign Students
• Text and Discourse for Foreign Students
• Russian as a Professional Language
• Issues in Intercultural Communication. Cultural Linguistics

Speakers explored a wide range of issues in teaching philology to foreign students.

In addition, the conference included a roundtable entitled “Russian Language in the Educational Process: The Dialogue Between Teacher and Foreign Students.” Members of the conference shared their teaching experiences, discussed the relations between teachers and foreign students, intercultural communication and general problems in teaching Russian as a foreign language in Russia and abroad.

A collection of articles written by over 120 members of the conference was published by the start of the forum.