Study materials in Russian Universities

Kupriyanova (2013) in her article talked about study materials and methods that are used in Russian Universities in teaching Chinese language. In her opinion, verbal communication with representatives of a different culture is as important as the ability to translate or understand texts of publicistic, formal, business and scientific speech styles. However, in Russia since long time ago the main focus is still on the study of characters, written language

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and practical grammar, in other words the grammar-translation method of teaching Chinese language is applied. She explains it by the fact that Chinese language became popular among Russian students in the time of “Cold War” between China and Russia. As a result, in 1990 the main goal when teaching Chinese language to students, was to prepare specialists who can deal with analysis, selection and translation of materials for top-level talks, and not the studients with ability to have a real conversation with Chinese people (Куприянова &

Пересадько, 2013).

There are two main study books that are used in Russia while studying Chinese language:

1. Zadoenko T. P. /Задоенко Т. П. - “Basics of Chinese”/ “Основы китайского языка”

(1983).

2. Zadoenko T. P. /Задоенко Т. П. -“Начальный курс китайского языка” (2010).

3. Kondrashevsky/ A. F. Кондрашевский А. Ф.-“Practical Chinese course”/ “Практический курс китайского языка”.

These textbooks assume mainly grammatical language skills, practically excluding the possibility of forming speech skills.

The book of Kondrashevsky is one of the most popular and commercially successful Chinese textbooks in Russia for teaching Chinese language. Almost every year there are new versions of this book where Kondrashevsky and his co-authors adjust text materials to the modern ones. There are already 12 editions of this book.

Even though these three texbooks are the most popular and used in Russian universities for many years, however there are a lot of new textbooks from China that also became very popular. However, according to the interviews done with professors there are professors who still thinks that books of Kondrashevsky A. F and Zadoenko T. P are the essentials for those who just start to learn this language, however some professors think that these materials are too outdated.

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One of the most challenging things while studying Chinese language is learning Chinese characters, which have been used in China for about four thousand years and is the only generally accepted writing system. (Zadoenko, 1993). It is known that it is much harder to acquire Chinese characters than alphabet. What is the difference? Chinese characters system differs from the alphabetic system in the way that there are more signs in it. There can be dozens of signs in alphabetic system, and thousand of signs in hieroglyphic system.

(Zadoenko, 1993). This way it makes all the process of learning Chinese language very difficult and sometimes not effective.

Chinese character system has many features and thus it is not easy for a person who used to use another system to acquire character system. Kochergin (2000) in his book analyzed the main aspects of Chinese characters system and psychological factors of a learner of Chinese language that are essential for an effective teaching of characters. In the language with alphabetic system learner first acquire the letters, and in Chinese language- graphemes. And after that combine them and make characters. The main difference is that the learner when learning graphemes has to acquire much more of them than letters in any alphabet.

(Кочергин, 2000).

Talking about the difficulties that a Chinese learner has while acquiring Chinese characters it is important to remember that even for Chinese people it is not easy. That’s why in 1964 People’s Republic of China government officially proclaimed to use new simplified characters 簡體字. This mainly helped to increase the literacy level of people.

From all these facts, it is obvious that the methods and study materials for teaching Chinese language are very important and they are the main factors of effectiveness of acquiring this complex language. For the last 20-30 years the books of Russian authors were the main study materials for those who were studying language. However, now there are lots of new books that are published by Chinese authors and they have different methods than the Russian ones.

The researcher made a comparison of few Russian and Chinese books. It is important to note

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that older professors are used to use old Russian books and younger generation of Chinese professors are using mostly new books published by China.

The researcher made a comparison of some main books that are used as study materials in Russia and pointed out some main differencies.

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Figure 8: Chinese textbook used in Russia’s universities

“Practical Chinese language course”/ “Практический курс китайского языка”/

Kondrashevsky A. F/ Кондрашевский А. Ф

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Figure 9: Chinese textbook used in Russia’s universities

“New Practical Course of Chinese Language”/ “Новый практический курс китайского языка”/ 北京语言大学出版社

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Figure 10: Chinese textbook used in Russia’s universities

“Chinese as an object”/ “Китайский язык- новый обьект”/ 教育科学出版社

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Figure 11: Chinese textbook used in Russia’s universities

“Сonversational Chinese speech”/ “Разговорная китайская речь”

Making an analysis of these four mostly used textbooks for studying Chinese language in Russia it is obvious to see the differences. The first book’s author is Kondrashevsky A. F and it is the most used study book for many years and especially in Russian Universities. In the

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example of the first lesson there are are only two new characters – 你 and 好. This book was created especially for Russian people and author took into account that Russian people are not used to the characters and in his opinion the characters should be studied slowly.

Vorsina (2015) in her article is analyzing two books: “Chinese as an object” (“Китайский как объект” 2004 edition), 教育科学出版社 and “New Practical Course of the Chinese Language” (“Новый практический курс китайского языка” 2008 edition), 北京语言大学 出版社. Vorsina (2015) thinks that first lesson can not have so many complex characters, which can not be fully mastered at the initial stage of learning the Chinese language. For example, in the textbook “Chinese as an object” in the first lesson, the following hieroglyphs are represented: 经理, 谢谢, and in the “New Practical Course of the Chinese Language” the following characters are represented: 你 , 好 , 波 . “The authors understand the need to introduce such lexical units as “hello” and “thank you” in the first lessons, but this approach of issuing new vocabulary is not systematic, but systemic is the key to mastering hieroglyphics” (Vorsina, 2015).

From the examples of three textbooks which are also very popular in Russia recently and which are published by Chinese authors it is obvious that lesson one has very complex characters. Thus, it can be concluded that the materials used in teaching Chinese are not always meeting the student’s needs. To motivate students to learn, Chinese materials should be more personalized for the Russian student needs.

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