Studying expressive language means in classes with Chinese Master’s students

Abstract

The article presents the methodological development of a lesson for Chinese undergraduates (B2 level and above). The aim of the lesson is to teach students how to search for expressive means in the works of Russian poets of the 19th and 20th centuries, which anticipates further work related to the literary analysis of the poems. Expressive means are considered to be not so much speech techniques (linguistic phenomena), as artistic techniques (epithet, comparison, hyperbole, litote) in literary criticism. The relevance of the work is determined by the need to find effective ways to develop international undergraduates’ skills of interpreting a literary text and their reading culture in the process of studying Russian literature. The scientific novelty of the article is its detailed description of a practice-oriented model of working with Russian poetic text expressive means in a Chinese audience: An integrated approach is proposed, including not only the identification of expressive means, but also the use of explanatory dictionaries, the analysis of semantic shades of words, the comparison of Russian and Chinese cultural associations, as well as the use of knowledge from related fields – geography, biology, and cultural history. This approach helps students to gain a deeper understanding of the literary text and improve their linguistic and cultural competence.