Report of a Russian teacher - classes for migrant children

RUSSIAN LANGUAGE TEACHING FOR MIGRANT CHILDREN.

METHODS AND CHALLENGES

The student develops himself not only as a linguistic identity, but also as a carrier of local, European and global culture. In Armenia they learn primarily with the acquisition of language skills rich cultural heritage of the country. Heimatgarten Adaptation Center in Armenia , established on the basis of ASPU actually becomes not only a center of learning, but also a place of "language" meetings for migrant children learning multiple languages, primarily native (Armenian) and attached to the respective cultures of carriers of a particular language. Developing this idea, it can be said that the meeting of people is also the meeting of cultures. Only in the case where the child is studying a language and gets familiar with the culture, traditions and norms of behavior specific country, only then he will be able to understand them. Concept of intercultural learning becomes at the present stage of development of the key.
Russian language teaching began in the January 2013. Currently 17 children are learning the language. Classes are based on textbooks:
• Antonov VE, Nakhabina MM, MV Safronova , AA Tolstoy "The Road to Russia", St. Petersburg,Chrysostom,2008;
• Miller L.V., Politova L.V., Rybakov I.J.  " Once upon a time ... " (textbook and workbook), St. Petersburg,"Chrysostom",2008;
• Lebedeva M.N. " Russian language with a smile. Short stories , jokes , dialogues , "Wiley, 2012;
• Shtelter O. " In this small basket ... Games in Russian lesson ", St. Petersburg , " Chrysostom,2012;
• Akishina A.A. "Russian language games ", Moscow, 2011 (various game tasks , crosswords, puzzles , charades ) .

The purpose of Russian language course in the adaptation center is not only the mastery of language and speech competence and communicative competence in general , but also the formation of socio-cultural competence at level A2 - B1, the accumulation of background knowledge, familiarity with the traditions of Armenian society, norms of behavior, communication registers.
In the process of teaching the interactive methods are used. Language is taught in a dialogue mode of implementation (oral productive speech) with the principle of information novelty. In parallel receptive skills (listening and reading) are developed. With regard to the formation of reading material provided by the so-called multi-level plateau of texts, ranging from A1 (Belyaeva G.V., Gorskaja E.I., Eremina L.I., Lutskaya N.E . Listen . Ask . Answer . Russian language . Courses . 2004; Gubieva I.G., Yatselenko V.A. Russian texts. Book for reading in Russian for foreigners. Russian language, 2010; Karavanova N.B. Read and understand everything! : A Guide to reading and language development for foreigners studying Russian . Russian language , 2009).

Of course, there are learning difficulties related to the structure of different systems of languages: Russian, Armenian, German, that belong to different language families. For contingent not speak Russian, great difficulties are grammatical categories that are not in the Armenian language. It is primarily about the category of grammatical gender that permeates various lexical and grammatical level words: noun, adjective , pronoun, ordinals. Under these conditions, only the implementation of the communicative approach does not give the desired results. In the learning process, we have developed and tested cognitive operations aimed at the differentiation and recognition of these phenomena and concepts. For example, personal pronouns 3 person singular (he, she, it), corresponds to the Armenian one undifferentiated concept նա. The challenge is for students to use techniques aimed at singling out three separate concepts նա 1 , նա 2 , նա 3. Signaling via a different color cards the labeled person as masculine, feminine and neuter. Using elements of role-playing game (acting- mother, father, brother, sister, boy, girl, etc.) are identified generic terms , and then realized generic differences. Only after realizing the generic differentiation on the material of the native language , you can continue to master the appropriate equivalents in the studied language, in our particular case Russian language .

Similar difficulties arise at the lexical level. Interference source are cases of semantic mismatch volume of lexical units. In this there is a need to knock situational data acquisition units with an illustration of the micro and macro context.
There are also some organizational difficulties. Teachers have to deal with the newly arriving contingent. It does not make much sense to put them into the already existing group, where children already possess some knowledge. For this reason, the teacher has to deal with them individually and intensively so that they were able to "catch up" with the group.
Intercultural learning involves extensive use of computer technology. Familiarity with virtual reality opens up new possibilities in the educational process through the creation of jobs, including cultural studies oriented to perform actions in the process of listening, speaking , reading and writing. Introduction of information technology significantly increases the motivation of students to study Russian language for communication, language and cultural interaction.