The use of thematic presentation as an audiovisual linguocultural means of language learning

Danilina Ol'ga Vyacheslavovna ORCID: 0009-0005-2483-2244 Senior Lecturer; Philological Faculty; Shenzhen MSU-BIT University 518172, China, Guangdong Province, Shenzhen, Guojidaxueyuan str., 1, office 217 olgadanilina@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Safronova Aleksandra Teacher; Russian Language Center; Shenzhen MSU-BIT University 518172, China, Guangdong Province, Shenzhen, Guojidaxueyuan str., 1 ksandrine_saf@mail.ru

Introduction

The presentation for a thematic lesson is a modern audiovisual tool widely used in the educational process, including materials designed to present visual and auditory information. Audiovisual means develop listening skills, expand the vocabulary of students and their cultural knowledge, increase interest in learning the functioning of the language, thus contributing to its more productive assimilation. The purpose of this article is to analyze such a modern means of teaching RCT as presentation, evaluate the effectiveness of using audiovisual tools in it and illustrate the use of presentations at the University of Moscow State University-PPI in Shenzhen. In the course of the study, observation and description methods were used. The scientific novelty of this article is that it examines current approaches to the use of audiovisual tools in RCT classes and offers some types of modern, interesting tasks for presentations.

Discussion

The use of audiovisual means in the classroom of Russian as a foreign language is an urgent and extremely effective way to stimulate the educational process, especially when it comes to thematic presentation. Working with presentation as a type of ICT in RCT lessons allows you to diversify the forms of work, students' activities, activate attention, and increase the creative potential of the individual. The presentation in the Power Point program can be used in the classroom when posing a problem, when developing a topic, at the final stage when bringing students to independent conclusions and reflection, when correcting acquired knowledge. By including diagrams, tables, practical tasks, tests, videos, and animations in the presentation ^[1], the teacher can turn it into an exciting way to involve students in educational activities. High information saturation combined with rational presentation of the material and activation of the emotional background (as it is known, "emotionally colored material is remembered – all other things being equal – better than emotionally indifferent" ^[2], and the effectiveness of training directly depends on the positive associations caused by the training material ^[3]) makes the presentation an indispensable tool in the work especially in the sense of increasing motivation to learn a language and significantly saving time. It should be particularly noted that the interest of the Chinese audience in the use of "multimedia and network resources" and the effectiveness of working with them are noted by many modern Chinese scientists engaged in research in the field of Chinese Russian studies ^[4].

The didactic principles of visualization and showing the phenomena of reality in dynamics, combined with the ability to use both individual and group forms of work in the classroom, make it possible to orient students in all aspects of the language, create communicatively justified incentives for speaking ^[5]. In addition, working with the presentation is easy and interesting due to the constant switching of students' attention from auditory images to visual, visual-auditory and even tactile (when working with game tasks on a blackboard or tablet). Presentations (as well as infographics, mental maps, etc.) allow you to present information more dynamically, interactively and in detail ^[6], make it possible to use "speech games, problem tasks and elements of competition" ^[7].

The use of thematic presentations at the joint University of Moscow State University-PPI in Shenzhen pursues the following linguistic and didactic goals: strengthening interest in Russian culture; mastering not only linguistic, but also paralinguistic aspects of communication; developing listening and speaking skills. The topic of presentations at the named university is primarily related to memorable dates that are important both for the Russian-speaking and for the world community (birthdays of famous Russian writers and poets), as well as Russian holidays that are nationally specific and have cultural potential (for example, Maslenitsa or Russia Day).

Based on the above, a careful selection of linguistic and cultural units to be included in the presentation is carried out. These units are primarily fragments of authentic feature and educational films, cartoons (sometimes providing greater clarity of sound), songs, scientific and journalistic broadcasts. It is these authentic materials that allow students to immerse themselves in the linguistic and cultural environment in a situation of lack of a full-fledged authentic language environment ^[8]. No less valuable are a variety of images that are freely available on the Internet, and various creolized texts (fragments of an advertisement, blog, or meme). The latter are of particular interest to the creators of presentations, since "text as a communicative quantity is not limited only to the linguistic component", the so-called "text design" contributes to better decoding and assimilation of information ^[9]. Finally, teachers' own audiovisual developments ("pseudo-authentic" videos or audio recordings) are actively included in presentations. A rich library of digital resources allows you to select educational material that best suits the linguistic needs, professional and life interests of students. A variety of digital tools and services allows the teacher to create educational material taking into account the individual characteristics of students, makes learning personalized ^[10].

To solve the issue not only of selection, but also of minimizing the material in accordance with the lexical minima of a particular stage of learning, video/audio file cutting in various video editors is actively used. At the same time, the authors intentionally include vocabulary in the content of presentations that goes beyond the current level of language proficiency in order to enrich the active and passive vocabulary of students and develop their language guesswork. Textual heterogeneity ^[11] is considered as a positive factor that stimulates complex mental connections and develops critical thinking. When preparing presentations, the principle of alternating fragments with low and high information saturation is also taken into account ^[12], with auditory and visual support, which makes it possible to delay "processing" the presented material and fully understand it later, during pauses and "switches", when misunderstood elements become clear, and the missed ones are restored. Pauses and "switches" during listening, in addition, activate various kinds of intertextual connections, allowing recipients to correlate the text of each slide not only with others in the presentation, but also with those presented earlier in the classroom, that is, with the general background information necessary for full penetration into the culture of the country of the language being studied.

Presentations designed for a lower level of language proficiency include small tasks aimed at removing language difficulties. Presentations for working with an advanced level of language proficiency have reference inserts. Tasks for most slides of those and other presentations are often formulated as installation tasks, which ensures not only the perception of the material, but also its memorization (as is known, "memorization and reproduction depend not only on the objective connections of the material, but also on the attitude of the individual to it" ^[2]). All presentations are ultimately aimed at "getting into speech" and conducting micro-discussions, that is, they involve the development of not only linguistic and sociolinguistic, but also social competence, which manifests itself in "willingness and desire to interact with others, self-confidence" ^[7], as well as "the ability to cope with the current situation" ^[7]. Therefore, working with a presentation in a lesson at MSU-PPI is not just watching a series of slides by students, but an active interaction between the teacher and students. Moreover, students strive both to actively process and assimilate the material, and to produce their own verbal or emotional-physical reaction to what they see and hear (since "perception is a sensory representation of an object or phenomenon of objective reality affecting our senses" ^[7]).

All the above-mentioned principles of creating presentations, as well as the linguistic and cultural units included in them, contribute to the successful implementation of comprehensive work with the audio-visual medium in question in thematic lessons at MSU-SPI. For example, let's turn to the presentations "Leo Tolstoy" and "Maslenitsa", which were used in groups of foreign speakers in 2023.

Since, when planning presentation topics, those that were most relevant for a given level of language proficiency were selected, the presentation "Maslenitsa" was aimed at 1st year students (A2+ level), the presentation "Leo Tolstoy" was aimed at 2-3 year students (B1+ level) of the Bachelor of Philology Faculty. Both presentations included both authentic audio and video clips and creolized texts, as well as audiovisual developments by teachers. For example, students were asked to listen to L.N. Tolstoy's address to children (recorded in 1908) and answer the installation question "Why should children remember Tolstoy?" The installation not only helped students navigate in the context of the sounding text (speaking to children), but also aimed them at memorizing information that It could be used at the final stage of working with the presentation when summarizing and discussing the significance of the personality of the great writer. The audio recording aroused great interest among the students, since Tolstoy ceased to be an abstract historical figure for them, a long-dead classic of Russian literature. The semantic content of the writer's address to children, as well as the convincing tone of speech and the sound of his voice (kind, calm, confident) gave students the opportunity to better understand Tolstoy's personality, feel and feel his character. The audio recording became a kind of tuning fork, thanks to which slides built on the principle of creolization of written information with an appropriate image were received extremely positively ^[13]. The heading "Do you believe or don't you believe?" offered to critically evaluate the facts from the writer's biography, comparing them with photos /pictures that support the meaning or contradict the text about Tolstoy. For example, the message that Lev Nikolaevich belonged to an ancient noble family, was an aristocrat, came into conflict with the image of a writer plowing in a field. And information about Tolstoy's nickname, given by one of his contemporaries (Lao Tzu), correlated with a pair of juxtaposed images of Russian and Chinese thinkers. Such tasks of an "open type, high level of problemativeness" ^[7], allowing students to "express their point of view, sometimes different from others" ^[7], are recommended for active use in any foreign language classes. There is a high probability that without the appropriate images, the questions to the slides would be devoid of depth and emotionality, their interpretation would not stimulate students to think critically and discuss the results of their reflections. Highlighting tools in the presentation (use of italics, pre-reform alphabet) They contributed to the solution of the same task – to create a feeling of "touching" the epoch, to the "living" personality of the great writer. Thus, not only the type of tasks themselves, but also the opportunity to present them methodically correctly, brought the naturalness of a lively discussion to a certain part of the lesson about Leo Tolstoy.

Since the target audience of the Maslenitsa presentation were students of a lower level of language proficiency, it was necessary to include tasks for familiarization with new vocabulary, for the removal of language difficulties. In this case, slides with the semantics of new vocabulary through images proved to be excellent. The combination of verbal and non-verbal components ^[11], the use of hyperlinks allowed students to quickly memorize new material right in the lesson and actively use it when discussing the following slides. Moreover, on some slides, the images not only illustrated the text (word or phrase), but also complemented it, highlighting certain components of meaning, creating emotionality, appealing to the feelings of students. So, a mini-text about the connection between a pancake and the sun through shape, warmth and joy was supported by the image of a delicious, steaming dish and a gentle, smiling sun.

Authentic fragments for this presentation were selected from N.S. Mikhalkov's film "The Siberian Barber" and from the cartoons "Smeshariki" and "Prince Vladimir", which have a rather complex linguistic content. However, the excerpts themselves were fragments with vivid, dynamic action and did not require active auditory perception, but served more regional research purposes. The presentation also included two staged videos recorded by Chinese undergraduate students and Russian teachers. These videos provoked the most violent reaction, as they clearly demonstrated the connection of the studied material with a real life situation. The slide, which contained interviews with Chinese students celebrating Maslenitsa in Moscow, was a creolized text, as it was designed in the form of a WeChat social network page and created the illusion of a lack of staging. The video recorded by the teachers looked like a recording of the real process of baking pancakes in the kitchen (the hostess of the house teaches a less experienced colleague to cook). The video has become not only an excellent material for listening, but also an incentive for university students to make pancakes on their own. The recipe for making pancakes was also designed as an integrative creolized text ^[14], which ensured maximum involvement of students in further work with this slide.

To repeat and consolidate the material at the A2+ level (unlike the discussion used in the case of the presentation about Leo Tolstoy), modern innovative technologies were used – an interactive group game and a test prepared on the platform 4exam.ru ., which made the final part of the lesson as exciting, dynamic and productive as possible and ensured the success of the final stage of work with the presentation – reflection.

After completing the work with the above-mentioned presentations, the authors analyzed the effectiveness of their use in RCT lessons in several target groups. Students of the 2-4 courses of the Faculty of Philology who worked with the presentation "Leo Tolstoy" (level B1+) were offered a questionnaire containing comparative questions aimed at identifying preferred types of tasks. The survey revealed a high degree of student interest in this type of work (presentation lesson). In the 1st year (A2+ level), in four groups with comparable academic performance (in two groups working with the presentation "Maslenitsa" and two groups studying the topic "Holidays" in the usual format of reading and discussing text material), an assessment of residual knowledge was carried out (comparing the results of the test task). The groups that worked with the presentation demonstrated more confident residual knowledge on the topic being tested. The proportion of students who completed the task by 86-100% in these groups was about 90%, while in other groups it was 75%.

Conclusion

Thus, the use of thematic audiovisual presentations – an effective modern teaching tool – brings interest, playful and creative elements to the lesson, increases motivation to learn a language, awakens students' desire to react more actively and emotionally to the material, develops students' linguistic, speech, socio-cultural and social competencies, improves skills and abilities in all types of speech activities, primarily in the field of speaking and listening. Based on this, the development and use of thematic presentations at the joint University of Moscow State University-PPI is carried out systematically and regularly, taking into account the level of students and calendar and thematic planning at each stage of language acquisition.

Application

1. Fragments of presentations (screenshots of slides) "Leo Tolstoy" and "Maslenitsa".