This article is devoted to the problem of international students’ step-by-step study of Russian word formation basics. The article puts forward the suggestion that the study of the Russian word-formation features should initially be based on the linguistic structure of the student’s native language, in particular, Chinese. Taking into account the L1 characteristic features will allow the teacher to create a certain logic for presenting the linguistic material, to detect similarities and differences between the mother tongue and the target language. Thus, the understanding of the typological differences between the Russian and Chinese languages highlights the need to develop the skills for isolating morphemes in a word, especially the root morpheme, and only then to introduce tasks, focused on the assimilation of certain, primarily productive word-formation models, into the educational process. We propose to use stylistic comments when working with derivative words of productive word-formation types and to use graphs that allow the students to understand the mechanisms of word production in the Russian language. By gradually expanding the range of analyzed lexemes, we develop the skill of isolating derivational affixes, primarily regular ones, teach international students to determine the word–formation meaning depending on the nature of the generating basis, to see and explain semantic shifts in derived formations, contributing to a better understanding of the pair “derivational base” – “derivative”. Moreover, it will be a serious reason for expanding the students’ vocabulary. The presented analytical work on the word-formation material is supposed to be carried out taking into account the principles of clarity, consistency and structuring.