WHERE, WHOM AND WHAT FOR: UNIFICATION OF THE PROCESS OF TEACHING UKRAINIAN AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Анотація

The article summarizes the process of development of  Ukrainian Studies inRussiain the last 25 years and analyzes one of its components – teaching Ukrainian as a foreign language. The author also looks at the main challenges in teaching Ukrainian over two periods: the initial period of development, when it was necessary to design syllabuses and fill them with appropriate content, no course books being available; and the period of next ten years, when quite a few course books were created based on the Language Levels of the Council of Europe.

Analyzing the development of methods of teaching Ukrainian as a foreign language, the author differentiates between such important factors as the country where it is taught, native language of students, and the final teaching goal. These factors determine different teaching targets. In  teaching a closely related language, teachers and course book designers should focus on  interlingual interference and  interlingual homonymy.

Another suggestion by the author is working out several approaches to the unification of the process of teaching Ukrainian as a foreign language based on the needs of the target audience. One of them is filling the course with the vocabulary which will work to ensuring proper professional training of students. Another essential point is using the experience of teaching other foreign languages and reviewing it taking into account the peculiarities of the Ukrainian language.

The next period of the development of methods of teaching Ukrainian as a foreign language could well result in creating a set of course books providing teaching integrated  language skills as well as consistency and continuity of teaching and learning materials.

Key words: Ukrainian as a foreign language, language proficiency levels, teaching Ukrainian for specific purposes.