Promotion of Transcultural Communicative Competence in Russian Language Teaching

Didactic Approach and Practical Examples

Abstract

Russian language teaching tends to focus on developing communicative skills in the normative standard language. Language contact phenomena from other Russian-speaking communities, e.g. Russian spoken in Germany, are rarely included into curricula, and textbooks often overlook the linguistic and cultural diversity of the learners’ environment. This article presents a language-specific approach to integrating transcultural communicative competence into Russian university lessons at the B1 level, along with a series of tasks and curriculum adaptations that address German-Russian language contact phenomena such as code-switching. The presented tasks draw on the research literature on Russian in Germany (Anstatt, 2009, 2011; Brehmer, 2021; Goldbach, 2005; Meng & Protassova, 2005) as well as on the bilingual language use of Russian-speaking influencers on social media (e.g. Rimos, 2024). The approach connects the language lessons to learners’ environment, as they may encounter such contact phenomena in everyday context, e.g. in public spaces. Learners are encouraged to reflect on the vitality and perceived ‘boundaries’ of Russian as well as on their own multilingual language biographies and cultural identities. This article is intended for teachers of Russian, curriculum developers and researchers in Slavic language contact linguistics.